Visitor Levy on Paid Overnight Accommodation: Motion Seanad Éireann — 2026-06-24 ============================================================ Chris Andrews (SF), Labour Panel I thank the Minister for attending. I agree with Senator McDowell's comments on the civic offices in Camden Yard. He made a number of various points on it, and all were very fair. I have a real concern about the way the funding was put in place for all of that. It felt like it was overnight, but as I have said before and will continue to say, funding for the redevelopment of flat complexes around the city has not been as quick to be found. Pearse House is one example. It is disappointing that the Minister has not met the residents in the Pearse House group, who have done huge work over many years. Nearly €500 million for the civic offices was found overnight, yet residents have had to fight tooth and nail to get the flats brought up to any sort of standard. Residents in the flat complexes in social housing feel that they are paying the price for the redevelopment of Camden Yard and the civic offices in the form of increased rent. The Minister would not believe how many people are really struggling with the increase in rents. Some have to pay an increase of up to 25%. It is hard to believe that the biggest landlord in the country can put up its rent by 25%. A private landlord would rightly not be allowed to do that. The residents are not getting anything for it either. They see no improvement in their living conditions. In fact, the regeneration plan for Pearse House was watered down to just a deep retrofit. This means that the flats are not going to increase in size. Neither the bedroom nor bathroom sizes are going to increase. There is going to be overcrowding because there are not enough houses being built. There are 18,000 people on the homeless lists. It is really frustrating for residents that they are paying significantly higher rents without seeing any benefit for it while the local authority and the Government can arrange to fund the redevelopment of Camden Yard and the council offices. Some would say that is not necessary. Senator McDowell made the point that it was not proven that that was required. It is really hard for residents to understand why they are being expected to live in substandard conditions for decades - for generations - when the money can be found overnight to refurbish civic offices at Camden Yard. I wanted to make that point. That said, I thank the Government Senators for submitting this motion. It is a motion we support. I would like to think that the Government Senators will go down to their parliamentary party meeting and convince the relevant Ministers to introduce it. I remember being on Dublin City Council eight or nine years ago where I heard Government councillors talking about this then. Why is it taking this long? I heard the Ministers, Deputies Chambers and Browne, saying they are open to the idea of this proposal. It is all very well to say they are open to ideas like this. We believe it is a good idea. Others differ. However, Ministers are saying they are open to considering it and making amendments. That is a long way from implementing it. As I said, when I was on Dublin City Council we used to hear councillors regularly talking about how important it is. Ten years later, we are still waiting. Forgive me for being sceptical. I just do not see this going anywhere under this Government. It is important. Senator McDowell said that neither local authorities nor elected representatives have the power. This would give power to elected members if it was implemented as proposed. That would be welcome. It is important that such a scheme would be introduced. We support the motion but we have reservations that the proposed levy should not target those who are travelling within the country and those who are not tourists, in particular people attending hospital visits, such as a person up from Kerry visiting the children's hospital. If they are staying in a hotel, they should not have to pay that tax. It should only apply to those with a residency outside of Ireland to ensure Irish people are not penalised for travelling for treatment and to encourage staycations. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-06-24/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:55:06+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-06-24