Less than €4k of fines issued to landlords in three years for not registering a tenancy
Under the original residential tenancies act, the Residential Tenancies Board has the power to levy fines of up to €4,000 and/or six months in prison for a failure to register a letting. File Photo: Mark Stedman/RollingNews.ie
The Residential Tenancies Board has levied fines totalling €3,964 for the non-registration of tenancies in just over three years, despite having the power to apply a penalty of up to €4,000 for each such offence.
In response to queries from the , the board, the official repository for all registered tenancies in Ireland, said that of 38 sanctions handed down in that time period, just four of them related to the non-registration of tenancies — itself a criminal offence.
The issue of non-registered tenancies reared its head in recent days, most prominently following an admission by Fianna Fáil TD and former Minister of State Robert Troy that a rental at his former family home had gone unregistered for nine months.
Mr Troy resigned his role at the Department of Enterprise after a series of revelations regarding his non-disclosure of property assets amongst other things.
A complaint requesting an investigation regarding that case was subsequently made to the RTB by People Before Profit TD Paul Murphy. Regarding that complaint, the RTB said it cannot comment on individual cases.
“The RTB will decide on which route will be taken when a complaint is made,” a spokesperson said. "The RTB takes non-compliance very seriously and is committed to discharging its role and actively regulating the residential rental sector,” they added.
Under the original residential tenancies act, the RTB has the power to levy fines of up to €4,000 and/or six months in prison for a failure to register a letting.
A further penalty of up to €15,000 and an additional €15,000 in legal costs can be applied when the board’s investigations and sanctions powers are utilised and where “improper conduct” is deemed to have occurred, the RTB said. Those powers commenced in 2019 as part of the Residential Tenancies (Amendment) Act 2019.
Just two fines however have been applied to date for non-registrations, one each for €2,514 and €1,450 to landlords Con McCormack and Darren Coyle respectively in 2021.
The remainder of the €34,240 in penalties handed down over the time period since 2019 stemmed from failures to comply with the requirements of rent pressure zones (RPZs) - a structure created by former Housing Minister Simon Coveney and aimed at lowering rental inflation in pressurised regions.
Some 55 RPZs have been created around Ireland since their inception in 2016.
Currently, annual rental increases in RPZs are capped at 2% or the annual rate of inflation, whichever is lower. Of those 34 cases, fully 11 of them applied to one company, Propmaster Ventures, which incurred fines of just under €14,000 for issues involving properties in the Dublin RPZ.
Last April, the RTB brought in new requirements for landlords to register their tenancies on an annual basis within one month of a rental’s commencement or on the anniversary of the same.
However, the new system has been plagued by delays, something the board last week blamed on “high volumes of calls, webchat and emails”.
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