Updated: 16.30

Over half of all available rental properties in Dublin are being listed as short-term tourist lets, according to property website Daft.ie.

It says landlords are increasingly opting to let to tourists rather than to long-term tenants.

"This is evidenced by the fact that... 53% of homes in the Dublin rental market were not available to long-term tenants", it says.

On May 15th, there were just 1,258 long-term rental properties available in Dublin on Daft.ie.

By contrast, the stock of full homes to let on Airbnb from professional listers stood at 1,419, Daft.ie claims.

Further research suggests that the decline in long-term rental accommodation shows no signs of slowing - with stock on the Dublin rental market set to dip below 1,000 units for the first time since 2001 by the end of this year.

Source: Daft.ie

Eamonn Fallon, co-founder of Daft.ie, says: "Action urgently needs to be taken to increase supply, both in Dublin and nationwide.

"The country needs close to 50,000 homes a year to cater to underlying housing demand - both market and social.

"Of the 50,000 homes, 15,000 are needed for the rental market with 10,000 of those in the capital.

"To put the scale of this challenge into concrete terms, Dublin alone needs an apartment block of 200 units to open every week for at least the next decade."

"Inaccurate scraped data"

However Airbnb has taken issue with aspects of the Daft.ie report.

A spokesperson told Newstalk.com: "This report uses inaccurate scraped data to make misleading assumptions about our community.

"Entire home listings on Airbnb in Dublin last year represented just 1.1% of the available housing stock in the city, and the vast majority (88%) of hosts share the home in which they live.

"The Airbnb model is unique and empowers regular people and boosts local communities, generating over €506m in economic activity in Ireland last year.

"We have put forward suggestions to Government for clear and fair home sharing rules for listings in Dublin, to help ensure that home sharing continues to grow responsibly and sustainably."

Airbnb says data from the Residential Tenancies Board, cross-matched with its own data provided to the Oireachtas Joint committee last year about host earnings, suggests that a typical unit of housing in Dublin would need to be rented for well over 120 nights a year to outcompete a long-term rental in income.

It adds: "It is clear that the vast majority of entire home listings rented on Airbnb do not get close to that tipping point.

"The 550 properties that were booked for more than 160 nights on Airbnb in 2016 represent just 0.10287% of all housing units in Dublin. Put another way, that is one in every thousand housing units."