... and enforcement is rare
THE Residential Tenancies Board is to review its approach to compliance, a spokesman has confirmed.
It comes as the recently exposed failure of former minister Robert Troy to register tenancies has highlighted continuing concerns about noncompliance by landlords.
The controversy has also raised questions about communication between the RTB and local authorities providing Housing Assistance Payments (HAP) to tenants.
Under the terms of the HAP scheme, landlords must comply with the Residential Tenancies Act 2004. This means they must register the tenancy with the RTB, a requirement aimed at ensuring tax compliance and protecting tenants’ rights.
To ensure all HAP landlords have registered, local authorities send lists to the RTB of all landlords receiving HAP payments, so the RTB can check that the tenancies have been registered.
This process failed in the case of Mr Troy, who received HAP from Westmeath County Council for a tenancy he had not registered. Neither the RTB nor the council has yet explained how this could have happened.
The RTB maintains it takes enforcement seriously and ‘is committed to discharging its role and actively regulating’ landlords. A spokesman confirmed a new compliance policy is in the offing.
‘As part of its ongoing work to build the RTB as an effective regulator, we are close to publishing a new regulatory risk framework,’ the spokesman said.
‘This will set out in clear terms how the RTB operates as a risk-led regulator. Following the publication of this framework, we will undertake a review of our current approach to compliance. As a consequence of this review, and in the context of our forthcoming Statement of Strategy 20232025, we expect to publish a detailed compliance policy early in 2023.’
The RTB already has ample power to discharge its enforcement duties.
Since its inception in 2004, the RTB can prosecute rogue landlords, who face fines of up to €4,000 and/or up to six months’ imprisonment. New powers came into force in 2019 allowing for fines of up to €15,000. But, in practice, the RTB has always used a carrot rather than a stick with landlords who fail to register.
‘The RTB makes every effort to inform landlords of their obligations to register and to support them in complying. Legal action is only taken as a last resort,’ a briefing note to the Oireachtas Public Accounts Committee this year reads.
This soft-touch approach is evident in the prosecution figures. According to the
RTB’s briefing note, there were 438 open investigations into alleged improper conduct at the end of 2021.
Most of these related to rent pressure zone infringements, with just 15% relating to unregistered tenancies. That means 65 landlords were under investigation for failing to register in 2021. Few are likely to be prosecuted.
In the past five years, there have been just four courtapproved sanctions of landlords for failing to register, according to the PAC briefing note. None has gone to jail and the largest fine has been €2,514, in a case which also involved an illegal rent pressure zone rent increase.
That case involved landlords Con and Tara McCormack and their unregistered tenancy at 36 Mount Symon Green, Clonsilla, Dublin 15.
The largest fine for a case involving only a failure to register was €1,450. That involved Darren Coyle and his unregistered tenancy at 12A Royal Canal Court, Dublin 7.
The RTB deletes the names of landlords on its sanctions list after two years. After that their identities remain effectively secret – just like the thousands of landlords to whom the RTB sends enforcement letters each year.
There were more than 6,000 such landlords in 2019, down from 20,000 in 2016. Most of these were simply allowed to register without any fuss.