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Kenmare, Ireland Short-Term Rental Regulations: A 2026 Guide For Airbnb Hosts

Kenmare short-term rental rules in 2026, including the 21-night planning trigger, the Fáilte Ireland register, Kerry County Council enforcement and the tax.

Kenmare, Ireland

Réponse rapide

Yes, but not without planning permission. Since 1 March 2026, letting any Irish property for 21 consecutive nights or less is a material change of use, so a whole-house Kenmare Airbnb needs change-of-use permission from Kerry County Council. Home sharing and short absences stay exempt. Fáilte Ireland registration opens 1 December 2026.

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Do you own a place in Kenmare, County Kerry, and you're weighing whether to put it on Airbnb or Vrbo? Well, the good news is that nobody has banned short-term letting here, and Kenmare has no by-law of its own pointed at hosts the way some European cities do. The less good news is that Irish planning law changed on 1 March 2026, and Kenmare now sits squarely inside a set of rules it used to sit comfortably outside of.

What changed was the definition itself, because section 30 of the Residential Tenancies (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2026 rewrote section 3A of the Planning and Development Act 2000. Letting a house, part of a house or a unit for 21 consecutive nights or less is now a material change of use, and the new wording says nothing at all about rent pressure zones. A material change of use is development, and development needs planning permission unless something exempts it. So unless you're sharing the home you live in, or letting it while you're away for under 90 days a year, a Kenmare short-term let needs change-of-use permission from Kerry County Council. When Radio Kerry asked in October 2025, the council said it had received zero applications for that kind of permission since the start of 2023.

So let's walk through what it actually takes to do this properly in 2026: which rule catches which kind of letting, the exemption paperwork and the deadlines attached to it, the Fáilte Ireland register that opens on 1 December, the tax layers you'll be dealing with, how hard the council pushes on enforcement, and who to ring in Tralee when you get stuck. Every figure below comes from the Irish Statute Book, Revenue, gov.ie or Kerry County Council's own pages, checked in July 2026, and where something is still moving I've flagged it. Before you commit money to any of this, though, run the property through BNBCalc first.

What are Short-Term Rental (Airbnb, VRBO) Regulations in Kenmare, Ireland?

Since I've just told you the permission comes from Kerry County Council, it's worth knowing that the council doesn't write the rule it enforces. Ireland has no municipal short-term letting law, so one national statute sets the test, one national register is about to sit on top of it, and the 31 local authorities administer both between them. For Kenmare that means Kerry County Council, in the Kenmare Municipal District, and that's the office deciding your application.

The statutory test lives in section 3A of the Planning and Development Act 2000, which section 38 of the Residential Tenancies (Amendment) Act 2019 inserted in the first place. In its original form it only caught a house "situated in a rent pressure zone", and it defined a short term letting as any period "not exceeding 14 days", so both of those limits mattered enormously to a town like this one, and both are now gone.

In their place, the 2026 Act substituted the subsection so that it now says, flatly, that the use of a house, part of a house or unit for short term letting purposes is a material change in the use. It also redefined a short term letting as a letting "on a professional or non-professional basis" for a period not exceeding 21 consecutive nights, whether the guest holds a tenancy or a licence, and all of that took effect on 1 March 2026 under S.I. No. 67 of 2026.

Two consequences follow, and they pull in opposite directions. Your booking has to run 22 nights or more to fall outside the definition altogether, which is a week longer than the old threshold and does give you a genuine mid-term option. Location, on the other hand, no longer gets you out of anything. It makes no difference whether Kenmare is or isn't in a designated zone, because rent pressure zones stopped existing on the same day the new wording started, when the RTB confirmed national rent control had replaced them.

That leaves the exemptions, which are where most Kenmare hosts will actually live. S.I. No. 235 of 2019 inserted article 6(5) into the Planning and Development Regulations 2001, and it exempts two things from the permission requirement:

  • Home sharing. You let a room, or up to four bedrooms, inside your principal private residence while you're living there, with a cap of four occupants per bedroom. There's no annual day limit on this one.
  • Letting your whole home while you're away, for no more than 90 days in a calendar year. The days don't have to run consecutively, and once you pass 90 you need permission for the rest.

Neither exemption is automatic, mind you. You have to notify Kerry County Council in writing and file Forms 15, 16 and 17 with a statutory declaration, which the next-but-one section walks through. Citizens Information also lists a handful of narrower exemptions worth checking against your own situation: a property that already holds planning permission for tourism or short-term letting use, corporate and executive lets, and purpose-built student accommodation.

One honest caveat before you rely on any of that. S.I. 235 of 2019 has never been amended, so its text still frames the exemption around a property "in a rent pressure zone", and those zones were abolished on 1 March 2026 with no replacement regulation made since.

The guidance hasn't caught up either. Citizens Information, edited on 23 June 2026, still quotes the old 14-day definition in places while treating the 90-day cap and the forms as live. Going through the statute book, I couldn't find anything that resolves the mismatch, so do ring the planning department in Tralee and ask how they're operating the exemption today rather than assuming your Form 15 lands the way it did in 2024.

Starting a Short-Term Rental Business in Kenmare

Assuming the exemptions don't cover you, and for anyone buying a second property they don't intend to live in they won't, you're still into change-of-use territory, and that's where the plan gets harder. Unfortunately for most people reading this with an investment in mind, a whole-house Kenmare Airbnb isn't a business you can set up in a weekend. It's a planning application, decided by a council that has spent four years writing warning letters about exactly this.

Kenmare's size cuts both ways here. The 2022 Census recorded a population of 2,566 in the town, according to Kerry County Council's own draft Kenmare Municipal District Local Area Plan, up from 2,376 in 2016. That matters because the government's draft policy on short-term letting proposes a presumption against permission in settlements over 20,000 people, and in Kerry only Tralee would clear that bar. So Kenmare sits in the softer category, where a council is meant to weigh an application on its merits rather than refuse it as a matter of course.

What are those merits? Citizens Information sets out the planned test for smaller towns and rural areas: whether the area has high housing need, whether granting permission would put too many short-term lets into one housing estate or apartment block, whether it creates a traffic hazard or a flooding or pollution risk, and whether it breaches an occupancy condition on a rural house. Be aware that the same page says permission is unlikely wherever there's high housing demand, high rent inflation and thin supply, which describes a fair slice of south Kerry in 2026.

Then there's the local plan, and this is the part I'd read closely before spending anything. The draft Kenmare MD plan names Kenmare, along with Sneem, Glenbeigh and Knightstown, as a settlement where holiday homes are already a pressure point, and it notes that some electoral districts in the municipal district are more than half holiday homes. Its policy then says something sharper. Holiday home development "shall be concentrated in existing towns, villages and settlements", while "holiday homes however will not be permitted on any residential zoned lands". Read that second clause twice if your property sits on zoned residential land, because it's the sentence a planner will reach for.

So what's realistically left? Three shapes, and only three:

  • Home sharing in the house you live in. Exempt from permission, notification only, no day cap. This is the safest route in Kenmare by a wide margin.
  • Letting your own home while you're away, up to 90 days a year. Also exempt, also notification only, and it suits a household that decamps for part of the summer.
  • Bookings of 22 nights or more. These fall outside the definition of a short term letting entirely, which puts a furnished mid-term let under ordinary landlord and tenant law instead of planning law.

Anything else means applying, and it means applying in a county where nobody has.

If you're comparing Kenmare against other small Irish tourism towns before you decide, the Clonakilty regulations guide covers a West Cork market of similar scale and the Bundoran regulations guide covers a seasonal seaside town on the Atlantic coast.

Short-Term Rental Licensing Requirement in Kenmare

Since applying is the only route left for a second property, it helps to know exactly what you'd be applying for, because there isn't a short-term rental licence in Ireland and there never has been. Kerry County Council issues no STR permit, charges no annual host fee and runs no local register of operators, so what you deal with instead are two separate systems that arrived twelve years apart.

The first is planning. For a new short-term letting use you apply for permission, while for a use you've already been running without it you apply for retention permission, which is the same process with a bigger fee and a worse starting position. As of July 2026, Citizens Information puts a change of use from residential to commercial in the "other buildings" class, which means €3.60 per square metre with a minimum of €80 for permission, and €10.80 per square metre with a minimum of €240 for retention.

Either way, a decision normally takes about eight weeks, and a refusal can be appealed to An Coimisiún Pleanála. Kerry's own scale of fees sits on a council document server that wouldn't load for me at any point, so do check the current sheet with the planning department before you send money.

The second system is the national register, and it's brand new. Fáilte Ireland will run a Short-Term Letting Register that opens on 1 December 2026, with a legal obligation on every operator to be registered by 31 December 2026, and ministers Peter Burke and James Browne confirmed those dates in a gov.ie press release last updated on 6 August 2026. Keep in mind that this is a deferral rather than the original plan, because the register was meant to open on 20 May 2026, which is why plenty of Kerry coverage and host-facing advice still tells you to be ready by May.

Fáilte Ireland's FAQ sets out how the thing will work in practice. Anyone offering paid accommodation for stays of up to and including 21 nights has to register, per unit, nationwide, whether that unit is a spare bedroom or an entire house, though hotels, resort hotels, suite and apartment hotels, hostels, guesthouses and camping, RV or trailer parks all sit outside it. You get a unique registration number, that number has to appear on every listing and advertisement, and booking platforms will only be permitted to list units carrying a valid one.

Registration also requires a legal declaration that the property complies with planning, building and fire safety requirements, which is what ties the two systems together.

On cost, Fáilte Ireland says only that "the registration fees will be announced shortly" and that they'll be kept to a minimum, so I'm not going to guess at a number. What the FAQ does confirm is that registration must be renewed annually, because the number expires. Don't forget to diarise that renewal, since an expired number means a listing the platform has to pull.

Required Documents for Kenmare Short-Term Rentals

That planning declaration is the reason the paperwork below matters more than it used to. Until now, a host who never filed a Form 15 was mostly left alone. From December 2026, the same host has to swear to Fáilte Ireland that the property complies with planning, and there'll be a searchable register of who did.

If you're taking the exemption route, three forms carry the whole thing, and each has its own deadline:

  • Form 15, the start-of-year notification. Send it to Kerry County Council within four weeks of the start of each year, and in any case no later than two weeks before the property's first short-term let of that year.
  • Form 16, the 90-day threshold notification. This one applies only if you're letting your whole home while temporarily away and you hit 90 days during the year. It's due within two weeks of hitting the threshold.
  • Form 17, the end-of-year notification. Send it between 1 and 28 January of the following year.

All three come with a statutory declaration, and you'll need documents proving the property is your principal private residence. Kerry County Council asks that the forms go to Homesharing and Short Term Letting, Planning Department, County Buildings, Rathass, Tralee, Co. Kerry, V92 H7VT, per its home sharing and short term lettings page, and there's no charge at all for notifying an exemption.

A planning application asks a good deal more of you, and Kerry's how to apply page lists five things that make one valid:

  • The completed planning application form.
  • A site notice, erected in the correct form and in the correct position.
  • A newspaper notice.
  • Plans and drawings, including a site layout plan, floor plans, elevations and sections.
  • The correct fee.

Miss any one of those and the council returns the application as invalid rather than refusing it, which costs you weeks. You can lodge it by post or email, or through Local Government Ireland's online planning portal.

For the Fáilte Ireland register itself, the Citizens Information summary of the planned process says an individual host will need to supply name, address, email, phone number, date of birth and PPSN, or the company's name, registration number, registered address and legal representative if you're registering through a company. On top of that comes the property's full address and Eircode, the type and size of the unit, and the compliance declaration. Make sure your Eircode and your planning position line up before you file, because that declaration is the thing an enforcement officer will read first.

Kenmare Short-Term Rental Taxes

Assuming you get through all that and are able to start letting, there's still tax to sort out, and the good news is that this layer is simpler in Ireland than in most countries. There's no bed tax, no occupancy tax and no local tourist levy anywhere in the State, so what you're left with is income tax, and VAT if you get big enough.

ChargeRateWho collects it
Income tax on letting profitYour marginal rate, taxed under Schedule D Case I or Case IVRevenue, via Form 11 or Form 12
VAT on the accommodation13.5%, once your turnover passes €42,500 in 12 monthsRevenue, once you're registered
VAT on Airbnb's service fee23%, applied by Airbnb to its own fee onlyAirbnb, added to what it bills you
Tourist, bed or occupancy taxNone. Ireland has no accommodation levyNobody

The classification is the part hosts get wrong. Short-term letting income is not rental income for Irish tax purposes, because your guest holds a licence to occupy rather than a tenancy. Revenue's manual on the taxation of income from short-term lettings puts it under Schedule D Case I where you're trading as an ongoing business, or Case IV where the income is occasional, and never under Case V. That distinction decides which deductions you can take, so it's worth getting an accountant's view in your first year.

One relief that does not help you here is rent-a-room. The €14,000 exemption needs a letting of at least 28 consecutive days, and Revenue's manual on the relief puts it beyond doubt that the relief doesn't apply to short term tourist accommodation based on home sharing, including where it's provided through online booking sites. Plenty of Irish hosts still assume the opposite, so don't be one of them.

VAT catches fewer people than they fear. Guest and holiday accommodation, expressly including "web-based guest and holiday accommodation", is taxable at the reduced rate of 13.5% whatever the length of stay, but you only have to register once your turnover from services passes the €42,500 threshold in any twelve months. A single Kenmare cottage rarely gets there; two or three together might. And when the restaurant and catering rate dropped to 9% on 1 July 2026, accommodation stayed at 13.5%, so a room-plus-breakfast package has to be apportioned between the two.

As for the platforms, Airbnb applies 23% Irish VAT to its own service fees and nothing else. It doesn't collect accommodation VAT or income tax on your behalf, so remitting your own tax is entirely on you. I wasn't able to verify how Vrbo and Booking.com handle the same question in Ireland, so check your own platform's tax page rather than assuming it mirrors Airbnb.

Ireland Wide Short-Term Rental Rules

Almost everything above is national rather than local, which is why a Kenmare host and a Galway host are reading the same statute. It's worth setting the full national picture out in one place, because two more pieces of it are still in motion and both could change your position before this time next year.

The first is the Short Term Letting and Tourism Bill, which is the legislation that stands up the Fáilte Ireland register and gives it teeth. The General Scheme was approved in April 2025 and went through pre-legislative scrutiny in February 2026, but as of my last check in July 2026 the Bill itself still hadn't been published, even though the register is due to open on 1 December. The Department has said enforcement will run through Fixed Payment Notices or District Court proceedings against hosts, plus an administrative sanction procedure against platforms carrying penalties of up to 2% of turnover.

Behind all of that sits EU Regulation 2024/1028. That's applied since 20 May 2026, and it requires registration numbers in listings, a single digital entry point and monthly reporting by platforms, with Ireland due to finish implementing it by 31 December 2026.

The second is the draft National Planning Statement on Short Term Letting, approved on 17 June 2026. It proposes the 20,000-population presumption against permission, a two-year compliance window for everywhere else, and a presumption in favour of permission where a property has been let continuously for seven years or more without the rules being enforced against it. That last one would matter a great deal in a place like Kenmare, where plenty of holiday lets predate 2019 by decades. Still, it remains a draft, subject to environmental assessment and EU notification, with a final version expected in the autumn. Treat it as direction of travel, not law.

Because the statute is national and the discretion is local, the practical answer varies a lot by council. A city over the 20,000 threshold is a different proposition entirely, as the Limerick regulations guide sets out, and a coastal town with its own tourism pressures reads differently again in the Dungarvan regulations guide.

Does Kenmare Strictly Enforce STR Rules?

Kerry is one of the councils that has actually used its discretion, and it has used it in one direction. Enforcement in County Kerry is neither theoretical nor new, and the numbers are public because councillors keep asking for them at monthly meetings.

The pattern started in Killarney. In January 2022 Killarney Today reported that the council had issued 183 warning letters over unauthorised short-term letting and unregistered B&Bs, and 94 of those dwellings ended up closed. Only two change-of-use applications came in afterwards, which tells you plainly enough what owners thought their chances were. As the council's enforcement officer put it to councillors at the time, "20-plus cases have come back to us and said they are going to stop".

By June 2023, the council's acting director of planning told a council meeting that 350 warning letters had gone out county-wide and 260 of those files had been closed, with most owners saying they were moving into the long-term rental market.

Then the pace changed. In October 2025, the council confirmed it had opened 31 investigations across 2023, 2024 and 2025, issuing 24 warning letters: 16 of 21 cases in 2023, four of five in 2024 and four of five in 2025. That's a lower volume than the 2023 blitz, but a much higher hit rate, and in the same statement the council confirmed it had received zero planning applications to let properties on Airbnb since the beginning of 2023.

Nobody in Kerry has tested the permission route in three years.

Mechanically, enforcement here is complaint-driven, and the trigger is lower than most owners expect.

Under the Planning Acts a planning authority is obliged to investigate a substantive written complaint unless it considers it trivial or vexatious, and Kerry's enforcement page asks complainants for the nature and extent of the alleged development, the full address, a timeline and the effects on the surrounding area. A neighbour who can point at your listing has given the council most of that already. The council also notes that complaints form part of its records under the Freedom of Information Act, so it can't promise absolute confidentiality to the person reporting you.

What follows a complaint is a warning letter, then an enforcement notice, then prosecution if the use continues. The penalties come from section 156 of the Planning and Development Act 2000 as amended in 2010: on summary conviction, a fine of up to €5,000 or six months' imprisonment, and where the offence continues after conviction, a further fine of up to €1,500 for every day it carries on. Watch out for that daily accrual, because it's the part that turns an annoyance into a genuine financial problem, and prosecution on indictment can reach two years' imprisonment.

From December 2026 there'll be a second, easier enforcement handle, and it won't need a neighbour at all. A registration number that isn't on a listing is visible to anyone, and a false compliance declaration is a much cleaner case for a council to run than proving a change of use from photographs.

How to Start a Short-Term Rental Business in Kenmare

Given how the enforcement side works, the order you do things in matters more than it looks, because the early steps tell you whether the later ones are worth attempting. Here's the sequence I'd follow for a Kenmare property in 2026.

  1. Decide which of the three shapes you're in. Home sharing in your own residence, whole-home letting under 90 days while you're away, or bookings of 22 nights and over. If none of them fits, you're applying for permission, and step 2 becomes step 1.
  2. Check your planning history and your zoning. Pull the existing permission for the property and read its conditions, because a rural occupancy condition or a holiday-home restriction can rule out short-term letting on its own. Remember that the Kenmare MD plan bars holiday homes on residential zoned land.
  3. Ring the planning department in Tralee before you file anything. Ask specifically how they're operating the article 6(5) exemption now that rent pressure zones are gone. That one call is worth more than any article, including this one.
  4. File Form 15 if you're exempt. Within four weeks of the start of the year, and no later than two weeks before your first letting. Keep the acknowledgement.
  5. Apply for permission if you're not. Site notice, newspaper notice, plans, fee. Budget eight weeks for a decision and be realistic about your odds given the county's record.
  6. Sort your tax before the first booking. Register for income tax under Case I or Case IV, work out whether you'll pass the €42,500 VAT threshold, and don't count on rent-a-room relief.
  7. Get your insurance and safety position straight. Standard home insurance rarely covers paying guests, and you'll be declaring fire safety compliance to Fáilte Ireland in December.
  8. Register with Fáilte Ireland when the portal opens on 1 December 2026, and put the number on every listing you run. Then set a reminder for the annual renewal.
  9. Track your nights. Whether it's the 90-day exemption cap or the 21-night definition, the count is what decides which rule you're under, so keep a simple booking log from day one.

Who to Contact in Kenmare about Short-Term Rental Regulations and Zoning?

Step 3 above is the one that saves the most time, so here's exactly who picks up. One thing to know before you dial: the Kenmare Area Office handles roads, not planning, so almost everything on this list runs through Tralee.

Planning applications, exemptions and Forms 15, 16 and 17

Kerry County Council Planning Department is where both the exemption notifications and the change-of-use applications land.

  • Address: Room 13, Planning Department, Rathass, Tralee, Co. Kerry, V92 H7VT
  • Phone: 066 7183582
  • Fax: 066 7120328
  • Email: [email protected]
  • Post Forms 15, 16 and 17 to: Homesharing and Short Term Letting, Planning Department, County Buildings, Rathass, Tralee, Co. Kerry, V92 H7VT

Enforcement, warning letters and complaints

The Planning Enforcement Unit investigates unauthorised development, which is the file a short-term letting complaint opens.

  • Address: Planning Department, Enforcement Unit, Kerry County Council, Áras an Chontae, Rathass, Tralee, Co. Kerry
  • Phone: 066 7183795
  • Email: [email protected]

The Kenmare Area Office

  • Address: Kerry County Council, The Library, Shelbourne Street, Kenmare, Co. Kerry
  • Phone: 064 6641155
  • Fax: 064 6641165
  • Email: [email protected]
  • Services: roads. The council's own page for the office lists nothing else, so send planning queries to Tralee.

General council contact and opening hours

Registration and tax

Registration questions go to Fáilte Ireland, through the Short-Term Letting Register pages, and policy questions about the scheme sit with the Department of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment. Anything about income tax or VAT belongs to Revenue, through myAccount or ROS rather than the council, and the council has no role in your tax at all.

What Do Airbnb Hosts in Kenmare on Reddit and Bigger Pockets Think about Local Regulations?

The contact list above is short partly because there's so little local machinery to talk to, and that shows up in how hosts here discuss the rules. Before the themes, one caveat: what follows is my read of what's been said publicly and on the record in Kerry, not a survey. Reddit blocks automated access, so I haven't read those threads and I'm not going to characterise them.

  • The loudest signal isn't a comment, it's a number. Zero planning applications in three years, in a county with thousands of holiday lets, says hosts have collectively decided the application isn't winnable. Kerry hosts appear to be choosing between the exemptions, the 22-night mid-term market, and quietly carrying on.
  • Elected representatives are firmly on the hosts' side. Independent Cllr Johnny Healy-Rae raised short-term letting at a Kenmare Municipal District meeting in May 2026, arguing the rules are too strict, that many hosts won't be granted permission "no matter what they do", and that letting income matters most to people already at financial risk. Independent Ireland leader Michael Collins made a similar case about rural tourism in June 2026.
  • The recurring grievance is retrospective, not prospective. Back in November 2022 Cllr John O'Donoghue told a council meeting about owners who spent retirement savings converting property for short-term letting and then found the use unlawful, and Killarney councillors made the same argument about families for whom a few months of letting is a real part of annual income. Nothing since has answered it.
  • Confusion about dates is genuinely widespread. A lot of Kerry-facing advice still says the register opens on 20 May 2026, because that was the date until the deferral in May. If you read something telling you to be registered before summer, check it against the December date.

None of that changes the legal position, though it does explain why so many Kenmare listings look untroubled by rules that, on paper, catch them. If you want to see how the numbers stack up around the country before you commit to anything, the Ireland market data is the place to start.

There's a broader lesson buried in it, though. When a rule gets enforced only on complaint, compliance stops being about what the statute says and starts being about how visible you are and how well you get on with the people either side of you. That's a fragile thing to build an income on, in Kenmare or anywhere else, and it's the sort of risk worth pricing in before you buy rather than after.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do you need planning permission for an Airbnb in Kenmare?

For a property that isn't your home, yes. Since 1 March 2026, letting a house, part of a house or a unit for 21 consecutive nights or less anywhere in Ireland is a material change of use under section 3A of the Planning and Development Act 2000, and change of use needs permission from Kerry County Council. Two exemptions survive: home sharing inside your principal private residence, and letting that residence for up to 90 days a year while you're away. Both need written notification rather than permission.

When does Fáilte Ireland registration start, and what does it cost?

The Short-Term Letting Register opens on 1 December 2026, and every operator has a legal obligation to be registered by 31 December 2026. It covers anyone offering paid accommodation for stays of up to and including 21 nights, per unit. The fee has not been announced; Fáilte Ireland says only that fees will be kept to a minimum. Registration has to be renewed every year because the number expires, and the number must appear on every listing.

What happens if you let a Kenmare property without permission?

Kerry County Council investigates written complaints, issues a warning letter, then an enforcement notice, then prosecutes if the use continues. Under section 156 of the Planning and Development Act 2000, a summary conviction carries a fine of up to €5,000 or six months' imprisonment, plus up to €1,500 for each day the offence continues after conviction. Prosecution on indictment can reach two years. The council has issued hundreds of warning letters across Kerry since 2022.

How is short-term letting income taxed in Ireland?

Not as rental income. Because guests hold a licence rather than a tenancy, Revenue taxes short-term letting profit under Schedule D Case I if you're trading as a business, or Case IV if the income is occasional, declared on Form 11 or Form 12. Rent-a-room relief does not apply. VAT at 13.5% applies to the accommodation once your service turnover passes €42,500 in twelve months. Ireland has no tourist, bed or occupancy tax.

Can you avoid the rules by taking longer bookings in Kenmare?

Yes, and it's the cleanest route available. A short term letting is defined as a stay not exceeding 21 consecutive nights, so a booking of 22 nights or more falls outside the definition entirely and needs no change-of-use permission and no Fáilte Ireland registration. That puts you into furnished mid-term letting under ordinary landlord and tenant law. Count carefully, since the threshold is consecutive nights per booking, not nights per month.

Last verified: July 2026. Every ordinance, tax rate, state law, and contact detail in this guide links to or comes from its official source.

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Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and not legal advice. Regulations could have changed since this article was published. Check local zoning authorities and consult a legal professional before making any decisions.

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