Too many renters in Ireland have zero legal protections
What began as short-term lodging has grown into a major feature of Ireland’s informal housing system, one built on insecurity.
Ireland’s rental crisis has produced many casualties, but perhaps the most invisible are licensees: people living in digs, spare rooms, sheds or sublets who fall outside the protections of tenancy law. They fall outside the protections of the Residential Tenancies Act (RTA).
Unlike tenants, they have no security of tenure, no access to the Residential Tenancies Board (RTB), and no guarantee of basic housing standards.
In research I carried out for the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, with support from Threshold, we found licensees live in a parallel rental market defined by informality and legal vacuum. What began as short-term lodging has grown into a major feature of Ireland’s informal housing system, one built on insecurity.
The lack of rights for licensees is not an accidental by-product of a housing system under strain. It is structural. From the beginning, licence arrangements were deliberately excluded from the RTA. That means no statutory notice periods, no deposit protection, and no access to RTB dispute resolution.
In practice, a licensee can be evicted overnight, lose their deposit with no recourse, and live in conditions that would be illegal in the private rental sector.
Because there is no official registry of licence arrangements, the true scale of this market is unknown. Even the RTB and CSO figures diverge. What we do know is that thousands of students rely on digs each year, while migrant workers, international students, and low-income renters often accept licence agreements because they have no alternatives or knowledge of their rights.
Rising rents have normalised house-sharing well into people’s 30s, and much of it takes place under informal licences.
One participant summed it up starkly: living as a licensee means "never knowing when the knock on the door might come".
The term “licence” is increasingly being used not just to describe short-term lodgers but to avoid tenancy protections altogether. Some landlords deliberately issue licence agreements even where the occupant has exclusive possession — the key legal test of a tenancy.
RTB tribunals occasionally pierce this fiction, reclassifying an arrangement as a tenancy when the facts demand it. But this offers little comfort to most licensees, who lack the knowledge, time, or money to challenge landlords in legal forums they technically have no right to access.
What was once a narrow exemption for genuine lodgers has become a loophole that enables de facto landlordism without regulation. Head-tenants sublet rooms at a profit. Absentee owners rent multiple rooms tax-free. Even employers sometimes tie accommodation to low-paid work. The line between casual room rental and landlordism has blurred — but the law has not kept up.
Meanwhile, the State actively incentivises some of these arrangements. The Rent-a-Room scheme allows homeowners to earn up to €14,000 a year tax-free by renting spare rooms. Yet there is no requirement that these rooms meet minimum standards, no security of tenure for occupants, and no dispute resolution mechanisms.
A newspaper recently published a detailed article on how to use licence income to pay a mortgage or fund home improvements. Missing was any acknowledgement the person generating that income may be living with no protections at all.
Government continues to frame informal renting as a win-win. Homeowners get income. Renters get cheaper accommodation. On paper, it looks like a pragmatic response to the housing crisis. But the reality, documented in the 'Renting at the Frontier' report, is closer to a systemic offloading of housing responsibility onto unregulated private arrangements.
What began as a niche or temporary option is becoming a pillar of Ireland’s low-cost housing provision — one built on opacity, insecurity and unequal power. Most people don’t even realise they are licensees until something goes wrong.
And because there is no registry or monitoring, there is no data on evictions, deposit disputes or housing conditions in this parallel market. In effect, the State has normalised a sector it cannot see and does not regulate.
International students are particularly vulnerable. They often pay high rents for cramped, poorly regulated rooms, face language barriers, and have little understanding of Irish housing law. For them, as for many migrants and low-income workers, licence arrangements are not a choice but the only option.
The reforms required are modest and entirely achievable. Licensees should be brought under the core protections of the RTA, including deposit protection, minimum notice periods, and access to dispute resolution. A national registry should be created to establish how many people are living under licence agreements.
Rent-a-Room tax relief should be tied to basic housing standards and the provision of clear notice periods. Template agreements and accessible information should be made available so both landlords and occupants know where they stand. A presumption of tenancy rights after long occupation could provide an essential safeguard against exploitation.
These steps would not abolish informal renting. They would simply make it fairer, safer, and more transparent. Because the question at stake is not only technical but political. If tens of thousands of people now rely on licence arrangements for housing, should they really have fewer?
- Dr Valesca Lima is assistant professor at Dublin City University, researching housing policy and governance
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