By Sean Moriarty

There is a chronic shortage of long-term properties to rent in the town – with just five in a 10km radius this week listed on rental website daft.ie.

There are over 600 short stay properties, in the same radius, available on airbnb.ie. The Government could make a decision within the next 10 days to further restrict the short-term letting of houses and apartments in an effort to appease the national housing shortage.

However, these are the very properties that visitors to Killarney want to rent – and any attempt to reduce available holiday properties in the town will be met with opposition from the town’s tourism leaders.

It will also lead to more expensive holidays for tourists (both Irish and international) as they face ever increasing costs against the backdrop of less choice.

"The visitors who come to rural Ireland for a few months mean a lot to the local economy in rural places such as Gneeveguilla, Scartaglin and Kilgarvan,” Danny Healy-Rae TD told the Dáil during a Lettings Enforcement Bill debate.

“It boosts the local pub or shop. That means something. We should not deprive those people of that. The other thing is these visitors want to experience rural areas. They perhaps left cities and hotels and gave half their life living in those very bright-light urban areas and want to experience a local place. If we hurt those people who operate what they call this Airbnb system, it would be wrong.”

He called on the Government to fund local county councils so they can build more affordable housing.

“I feel this bill is interfering with the democratic rights of house holders to do what they chose with their own property. Rents are expensive but this is not the way to deal with it, they need to build more houses as a matter of urgency,” he added.

"There are two major issues here; one is planning permission where the only place that seems to be available is Killarney where sites are costing €1 million an acre now, and the other issue is the increased cost of materials to build a house.”