Housing Minister did not seek resignation of RTB director, who will leave post in January

A spokesperson for the Housing Minister (pictured) said “to be very clear” that Darragh O'Brien had “not sought the resignation of Mr Byrne". Picture: Sasko Lazarov/RollingNews.ie

The head of the Residential Tenancies Board (RTB) Niall Byrne will leave his post in January after just two years.

Housing Minister Darragh O'Brien has said he did not seek Mr Byrne's resignation and will meet him next week.

Confirming that Mr Byrne will be exiting his role as director of the RTB on January 31, a spokesperson for the Housing Minister said “to be very clear” that Mr O'Brien had “not sought the resignation of Mr Byrne".

“Minister O’Brien and Mr Byrne are due to meet, as scheduled, next week,” they said.

“Minister O’Brien will take the opportunity to thank Mr Byrne for his years of service to the RTB and to discuss the transition arrangements in place pending the appointment of a new chief executive.” Mr Byrne took over the RTB role from Padraig McGoldrick in January 2022 after spending five years as chief officer of the Pharmaceutical Society of Ireland (PSI).

The RTB has endured a difficult time under his tenure, with accusations that the board is not fit for purpose in terms of regulating Ireland’s stressed rental market.

RTB data

Separately, the accuracy of the board’s own data regarding how many landlords are fleeing the private rental market was recently called into question. Census data from the Central Statistics Office indicated that there are now more landlords in Ireland than there were seven years ago, a direct contradiction of the RTB’s published data. 

This is generally attributed to the fact less tenancies are being registered at present.

Mr Byrne, as recently as October 10, had told the Oireachtas Housing Committee of the RTB’s “frustrations” that the board is “not currently properly authorised” to operate as a force “to regulate the entirety of the sector”, and said he wondered why “people who live in local authority housing do not have access to the benefits that come from the RTB”.

He said that given private renting in Ireland is now essential rather than optional and as such “a different proposition than it was 20 years ago”, he said that whole-of-sector regulation by the RTB “is where we could go if we were really ambitious”.