Minister vows crackdown on Airbnbs 'draining Mayo housing supply'

Minister for Housing James Browne has said the government will move to curb the rise of Airbnbs in both urban and rural areas, insisting that communities must take priority over short-term letting.

Speaking during his visit to Mayo, Minister Browne admitted that platforms like Airbnb are impacting the availability of homes for local families.

“We’ve seen an extraordinary rise in Airbnbs both in rural and in urban areas… they are having an impact, they’re having an impact in terms of people needing homes to live in,” he said.

The Wexford TD confirmed that he is working with colleagues to tighten the law.

“An awful lot of Airbnbs are breaking the law, they don't have planning permission, they shouldn't be there, the challenge is actually on enforcement, it's quite difficult to get the evidence that will succeed in court but so we're changing the law”, Minister Browne said.

“We’re changing the law to effectively ban the vast majority of Airbnbs anywhere in towns over 10,000 people and below that, local authorities will have the discretion as to how they deal with them.”

Westport, which has the highest concentration of Airbnb’s countywide, will miss that threshold.

A study by this newspaper identified an increase in vacancy in Westport over the previous five years, despite dereliction in the area reducing at a higher rate than elsewhere.

This has led many to point at investors snatching up property in the area around the tourist hotspot, renovating and placing these homes on the short-term letting market.

He stressed that the move is not an attack on hosts, but a recognition of the crisis.

“It’s not that Airbnb people are in and of themselves wanting to do anything wrong, but we are in a housing crisis, we have to make difficult decisions and that is to prioritise homing people rather than Airbnbs and people making profit out of those houses,” he added.