Poor little Housing Minister being prevented from doing something he totally and definitely wants to do by the big bad commission.
The reality of course is that government have never had any interest in enforcing the law on Airbnb, which is why they left it up to local authorities in the first place and then didn’t resource them.
They only made this move to change enforcement because last year Sinn Féin introduced a bill to [require Airbnb and other short term let platforms to require evidence that any property had the relevant permission](https://www.sinnfein.ie/contents/63648), if they failed to do so they could be fined.
In response Government quickly introduced their own bill to give Failte Ireland (bizarrely) the power to create a register and enforce the existing law on short term rentals.
That has now been caught up in a Commission process – which the Minister would have known about beforehand, but it now very upset to learn exists.
If Sinn Féin’s bill had been allowed to proceed we wouldn’t have this issue. Airbnb would have to do the work of making sure people have the correct permission, and if they don’t AirBnB get a nice big fine.
The advantage of the SF approach is that it didn’t require setting up any additional administrative scheme – merely enforcing existing domestic law. What triggers a TRIS notification can be hard to determine, but previous similar requirements (e.g. enforcing existing domestic licensing arrangements on online gambling providers) have not required a notification.
What on earth is the point in meeting them the month the standstill procedure may be ending? If there is some sort of flaw with the legislation that they could have ammended then the time to meet them would have been months ago. As others have said he wants to be seen to be doing something while doing nothing.
Lets not forget as well the legislation they notified hasn’t even passed the committee stage so could still be changed massively before its passed at which point they will have to renotify to the Commission and start the whole procedure again
2 comments
Poor little Housing Minister being prevented from doing something he totally and definitely wants to do by the big bad commission.
The reality of course is that government have never had any interest in enforcing the law on Airbnb, which is why they left it up to local authorities in the first place and then didn’t resource them.
They only made this move to change enforcement because last year Sinn Féin introduced a bill to [require Airbnb and other short term let platforms to require evidence that any property had the relevant permission](https://www.sinnfein.ie/contents/63648), if they failed to do so they could be fined.
In response Government quickly introduced their own bill to give Failte Ireland (bizarrely) the power to create a register and enforce the existing law on short term rentals.
That has now been caught up in a Commission process – which the Minister would have known about beforehand, but it now very upset to learn exists.
The delay was always going to be longer than 3 months because the TRIS directive explicitly states that the delay will be 12 months where the commission proposes an instrument in the same area. The domestic Bill was approved for drafting [in December 2022](https://www.gov.ie/en/press-release/f5707-short-term-tourist-letting-register-to-be-established-through-new-legislation/) a month after the commission [proposed its own instrument](https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=COM:2022:571:FIN). This can’t have been an unexpected result, it is laid out in black and white in the TRIS directive.
If Sinn Féin’s bill had been allowed to proceed we wouldn’t have this issue. Airbnb would have to do the work of making sure people have the correct permission, and if they don’t AirBnB get a nice big fine.
The advantage of the SF approach is that it didn’t require setting up any additional administrative scheme – merely enforcing existing domestic law. What triggers a TRIS notification can be hard to determine, but previous similar requirements (e.g. enforcing existing domestic licensing arrangements on online gambling providers) have not required a notification.
What on earth is the point in meeting them the month the standstill procedure may be ending? If there is some sort of flaw with the legislation that they could have ammended then the time to meet them would have been months ago. As others have said he wants to be seen to be doing something while doing nothing.
Lets not forget as well the legislation they notified hasn’t even passed the committee stage so could still be changed massively before its passed at which point they will have to renotify to the Commission and start the whole procedure again