Planning Issues
Dail Éireann — 2026-01-22
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Paul Nicholas Gogarty (IND), Dublin Mid-West

Gabhaim buíochas leis an Aire Stáit. This is not going to sort out the housing crisis but it will make a dent. Where it is going to help in particular is where people can either have a starter home or an age-appropriate home in the area where they already live, work or grew up. That is crucial because a lot of people cannot actually get a property in the area where they have grown up. In that context, it is important to make sure this legislation is primarily for families with, maybe, a two-year exemption period where someone has used it and they have moved on and then it could possibly be extended under the rent-a-room scheme, for example, should people have that annex available. I am very conscious that there are a lot of cowboy operators out there who have built unauthorised developments in back gardens and are renting them out. They are not registered with the tenancies board so we have to make sure this is purely for family members only, initially anyway.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-01-22/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:32+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-01-22