Taoiseach accepts Donnelly's 'genuine oversight' in failing to register tenancy

Health Minister Stephen Donnelly has admitted that he failed to register a rental property he owns with the Residential Tenancies Board (RTB) in 2019.

The Taoiseach says that he "accepts" Health Minister Stephen Donnelly's "genuine oversight" in not registering a tenancy with the RTB but said he has "not seen the context" of Mr Donnelly's representations to the Dáil on behalf of so-called accidental landlords.

In 2020, Mr Donnelly said he was an accidental landlord due to a property in Sandyford, County Dublin falling into negative equity. Dáil records show that from 2014 to 2017, Mr Donnelly argued that such landlords should be tax exempt.

In a 2017 Select Finance Committee debate on the issue, Mr Donnelly said he was due to meet Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe on it.

"For several years I have tabled amendments to try to create an exemption for accidental landlords to stop them from being double taxed," he said.

However, while Mr Donnelly spoke about how people had been "trapped" by these homes and would be charged tax at the marginal rate on any rental income, he did not declare that this was his situation personally.

Section 7 of the 1995 Ethics in Public Office Act says: "A member who proposes to speak or vote in proceedings to which this section applies and who has actual knowledge that he or she or a connected person has a material interest in the subject matter of the proceedings shall— (a) if he or she proposes to speak in the proceedings, make a declaration of the fact aforesaid in the proceedings before or during his or her speech, and (b) if he or she proposes to vote, but does not speak, in the proceedings, make the declaration aforesaid in writing and furnish it before voting to the Clerk, or the clerk to the committee, concerned, as may be appropriate."

When this was put to Mr Martin, he said that people should declare their interests in debates, but said the Dáil Register of Members Interests was a declaration.

€100 fine

Mr Donnelly told reporters it should not have happened but it was due to an “oversight”, and there was no advantage to not registering the property with the RTB. However, he said that he was not considering his position. He added that he had paid a €100 fine for the error.

He said: “It should have been renewed in 2019. That’s my fault. There was an oversight. The responsibility is mine. It’s a long-standing tenancy. It was registered in 2011, then it was renewed in 2015. It shouldn’t have happened and I rectified it as soon as I discovered it."

He said under the "old laws", an existing tenancy needs to be renewed every four years.

“So 2015, then 2019 and then 2023 and I missed it (in 2019) and I accept that as a mistake and it shouldn’t have happened and I fully hold my hands up on it. As soon as I discovered it, we contacted the RTB, they said to backdate it online and that was done and that is the same process that anybody has to go through who missed a renewal.”

Mr Donnelly said "in this particular property we are accidental landlords" but said his lobbying was based on the imbalance he felt existed between homeowners and investors.

"We bought a property and went into negative equity. The position I was making is we need people to be able to rent places. We had a situation where Irish citizens had a property and were being taxed at about 50% and corporate investors were paying a tiny fraction of that."