Legislation bringing in the Revenue Commissioners, and the charging of commercial rates and commercial water charges, needs to be brought in to tackle short term letting in the city centre.
This is the view of Labour Galway City West councillor, Niall McNelis, who was reacting to a report issued to the Galway City Council, ‘Update on Difficulties with Enforcement of Short Term Letting Regulations’.
The report details the difficulties faced by the local authority in regulating short term letting and how it is also affecting the supply of accommodation in the city centre.
Short term letting is defined as the letting of a house or apartment, or part of a house or apartment, for a period of less than 14 days.
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Homesharing is the letting of a room or rooms in a person’s principal private residence. Homesharers are allowed to sublet their entire principal private residence (house or apartment ) on a short term basis for a cumulative period of 90 days where they are temporarily absent from their home. Where the 90 day threshold is exceeded, change of use planning permission is required.
According to the city council report, where letting in Galway city is above the threshold (ie, 14 days or 90, depending on the type of letting ), to date only five planning applications have been received by the local authority, despite the fact that the entirety of the LA is a Rent Pressure Zone.
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The report noted that, by using the Planning and Development Act/Regulations as an enforcement tool, City Hall is bound by the timelines laid down in the enforcement provided for under the legislation. As it is also a criminal prosecution, the level of evidence needs to be “beyond reasonable doubt”, and in the enforcement of short-term letting, “that is difficult to achieve”.
“From our experience in investigating alleged short-term lettings to date, we have not been able to provide evidence that is beyond reasonable doubt, that short term letting in contravention of the Planning and Development Regs is occurring,” the report read.
“The next hurdle to overcome is to identify the person or persons in breach of the said regulations. In some instances, we have not been able to identify the owner of the property to serve a summons, and in other instances the owner states that they have let the property on a long-term lease, and will not provide the name of the leasee quoting GDPR regulations.”
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Cllr McNelis [pictured above] said the report outlines how difficult it is to police short term lettings, and that it shows the urgent need for legislation “to tackle those using the current regulations to operate businesses in residential areas”.
He called for such legislation to give a role to the Revenue Commissioners, and for commercial rates and commercial water charges to be applied to such businesses.
“We have cases where we, as a city, are using hotel accommodation to house families who are homeless, and housing being used for tourist accommodation,” he said. “We need solutions to tackle our housing crisis in the city and also the student housing crisis, tackling short term lets will be a start.”
