Kerry Co Co issues 180 warning letters to property owners in crackdown on short-term lets

Kerry County Council has issued more than 180 warning letters to property owners in a major crackdown on short-term letting of homes, with over 90 per cent of the cases in the Killarney area alone.

The council had sought almost €170,000 in Government funding so it could begin a clampdown on the widespread unauthorised use of property for short-term rent, Airbnb, and holiday home rentals.

The local authority said it had since investigated 195 different properties with 183 warning letters issued to property owners.

It said 93 per cent – or 170 – of the warning letters had related to short-term lets in the local electoral area of Killarney, the county’s most important tourism location.

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It said 118 files remain open, with a further 77 closed where the owner had either formally registered their property for short-term lets or withdrawn it from the short-term rental market.

According to internal records, Kerry Co Council applied for funding from the Department of Housing to carry out a blitz on short-term letting not long after Killarney was designated a rent pressure zone in April 2020.

In an application, the council said their enforcement unit was already “extremely busy” dealing with their day-to-day work.

The funding letter said: “From research carried out during 2019, there were substantial numbers of properties registered on Airbnb for the Killarney [area]and Killarney Town in particular, where there were over 500 properties alone or on Airbnb.”

It said it was looking for just under €170,000 so that they could hire two additional staff for a crackdown that would run between August 2020 and the end of next month.

In granting the funding, the department said they would “expect to see positive results” once the new staff were in place.

It warned that funding must only be used for short-term letting enforcement, that staff could only be hired on a contract or temporary basis and that it would be seeking regular progress reports.

It said they were also investigating options around legal searches to allow for “more efficient use of resources and the sharing of practical enforcement activity”.