New crackdown on rogue landlords after UCC area problems
The RTB said it was aware of the Magazine Road Residents' Association's ongoing concerns about the issue of unregistered tenancies. File Picture: Dan Linehan
The Residential Tenancies Board (RTB) says a "revised compliance and enforcement policy" is on the cards this year as part of a crackdown on rogue landlords.
The news emerged as the RTB confirmed it has agreed to meet residents in Cork who have taken a national lead on highlighting the potential national scale of the problem of unregistered tenancies.
The RTB said it was aware of the Magazine Road Residents' Association's ongoing concerns about the issue, which were reported again in the Irish Examiner last week.
The residents' latest spot-check found more than a third of the 270 privately rented properties around University College Cork (UCC) appear not to be registered by landlords with the RTB.
It is the fifth time in seven years that the group has found such high levels of apparent non-registration.
Deliberately failing to register a tenancy is a criminal offence and also constitutes “improper conduct” under the law, the RTB said.
The residents wrote to the RTB again last week with their latest findings and threatened to take a complaint to the Ombudsman unless the agency responded effectively.
Now, the RTB has told the that a new enforcement regime will kick in this year, and confirmed it had offered to meet the Magazine Road residents in Cork soon.
“In response to their most recent letter, we have offered to meet the residents’ association at a location in Cork to fully understand the issues raised and to explain the role of the RTB in relation to their correspondence,” a spokesperson said.
The RTB said one of its core functions is to maintain the register of tenancies, and that all tenancies that fall within its remit must be registered within one month of the tenancy commencing.
“We expect all landlords to comply with this responsibility,” the spokesperson said.
“The RTB makes every effort to inform landlords of their obligations to register and to renew their tenancies.
“Recognising that the vast majority of landlords (and their agents) comply voluntarily with their obligations, the RTB aims to invoke formal compliance action in those cases where this is in the public interest, and where other approaches have clearly failed.”
The RTB said it had a range of sanctioning and prosecution powers which may be invoked in the context of non-registration of tenancies, and that a prosecution through the district court can lead to a conviction, a fine and/or imprisonment, while a formal finding of “improper conduct” can lead to the imposition of a civil sanction in the form of a financial penalty.
But crucially, the RTB spokesperson confirmed a "regulatory risk framework", approved by its board in September 2022, would be implemented during this year, and a revised compliance and enforcement policy was on the way.
The risk framework will involve the RTB reviewing how all current compliance-related activities are coordinated and managed, including how information of all types — from internal and external sources, including media reports and other public bodies — is gathered, analysed, risk-rated, and used to inform timely compliance action.
And a new RTB statement of strategy 2023-2025, which is due to be published soon, will set out details of the RTB’s key strategic objectives in relation to effective regulation, including its intention to implement a revised compliance and enforcement policy beginning this year, the spokesperson said.
