The estate agent said that they would send someone round tomorrow and I had to calm them down.

Come in two weeks, I told them, because the builder boyfriend is still painting the hallway with the yellow paint I don’t much like any more because it’s taken so long.

The new laws leave us paranoid about having anyone step foot in our house for longer than three weeks

They love selling these old country piles in Ireland because they change hands so often it’s a licence to print money – not for the owners, but for the agents who keep selling them year after year, after the owners have not been able to afford to keep them going.

Usually, it’s the lack of plumbers and tradesmen, but now there is another problem. The Irish government is bringing in a law restricting who can do Airbnb.

I couldn’t make head nor tail of the new regulations, except to see they are bound to be another chilling example of how socialism follows the law of unintended consequences. So I registered for an Airbnb webinar where the company would explain it.

The idea the Irish government seems to have had is to declare ‘rent pressure zones’, and to try to restrict the ability of home-owners to do anything with their spare rooms and annexes other than renting them out to people who need somewhere to live permanently. So a new registration scheme is coming in this spring to license Airbnb in Ireland – and potentially other countries if the idea spreads like socialist contagion usually........

© The Spectator