Each year since it got powers to look into breaches of rental laws, the RTB has launched fewer and fewer formal investigations

The Residential Tenancies Board (RTB) launched fewer formal investigations last year into breaches of rental laws than in past years, according to figures in its annual report.

Under Part 7A of the Residential Tenancies Act, the RTB has powers to investigate varieties of “improper conduct” by landlords, among them, illegal rent increases, failing to register a tenancy, or giving a reason on a notice of termination that is known to be false.

In 2023, it started 82 formal investigations, according to its annual report for 2023. The regulator started 245 investigations in 2020, 169 in 2021, and 130 in 2022, the report says.

But, “it is quite important to recognise that the number of investigations, in and of itself, is not a measure of the success or otherwise of the RTB as a regulator”, said Lucia Crimin, a deputy director at the RTB, earlier this month in response to questioning from TDs and senators.

The act lays out a long and particular process for those formal investigations, said Crimin, at the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage. So, to make the best use of resources, the RTB reserves that process for “very deliberate and determined rogue landlords”.

Crimin said that she sees last year’s figure as about how many investigations the RTB expects to do itself.

“Somewhere in and around 100 investigations is probably a sustainable amount for an organisation of the shape and size of the RTB with the process that is provided for in the legislation,” she said.

Sinn Féin TD Thomas Gould said that “in light of the number of properties the RTB is dealing with … 100 is only a drop in the ocean”.

Crimin said individual investigations are time-consuming, so the RTB is looking at developing an alternative approach to compliance using bulk data. “This involves identifying all potential breaches of the Act that can be regularised and brought into compliance quickly, cheaply and easily.”

Members of the committee welcomed the move to use more reliable and regular data gathered by the RTB to scale up and automate its efforts to make sure landlords are complying with laws.

“That bulk work is absolutely needed,” said Cian O’Callaghan, the Social Democrats TD, given that rent data suggests widespread illegal rent increases and how tenants can often be wary of reporting issues themselves.

But that automated work also can’t become a box-ticking exercise with no follow-up, said O’Callaghan later by phone. “There is a lot of work downstream that is very important.”

Scouring the data

Crimin listed a few ways in which the RTB is looking to use its data and new IT systems to make sure landlords are following rental laws.

It has commissioned work to track the rents linked to the same properties over time, she said. “We expect that by the end of this year we will have much greater insights.”

“I am very confident that what it will tell us over time will really point to specific addresses and properties where there appears prima facie to be a breach of an RPZ, in which case the RTB will then be able to take proactive action against that,” she said.

“This will be done in a bulk way where we can identify large volumes – hopefully not too large – and potentially we will be able to automate that detection and put potential non-compliance into a compliance channel,” said Crimin.

Crimin said the RTB is using bulk data to address non-registration of tenancies. They issued 17,000 notices at the end of last year to landlords, where they suspected non-compliance, she said.

They gave them a chance to comply, she says, to register or tell them a tenancy was over. “When we analysed that data set again in April, the number had decreased to about 1,500.”

“We are going through those now and undertaking much more detailed analysis to identify if they are, in fact, unregistered tenancies that should be registered or not with the RTB,” said Crimin.

There were just under 224,000 private-rental tenancies registered with the RTB at the end of 2023, Crimin said. The RTB needs automated systems to operate at this scale, she said.

Crimin differentiated between those landlords who may accidentally not be complying and those who are repeatedly breaching laws – and the ways to bring them in line.

“It is our experience the vast majority of landlords want to comply but where there is deliberate and intentional breaching of the law, that should be investigated and that should be one of the 100 investigations we undertake,” she said.

Crimin didn’t outline what process there would be to track and check the cases of possible breaches that might be flagged through data analysis.

O’Callaghan, the Social Democrats TD, said later on the phone that relying on data doesn’t mean that there won’t be work to do by people down the line and a need to resource the rental regulator for that work.

“You’d have to have individuals following up on breaches,” he said.

Look at the experiences of local authorities tasked by central government with scaling up inspections and enforcement of minimum standards in private rental properties.

Some local authorities have done little meaningful follow-up of breaches identified in initial inspections. For years, South Dublin County Council for example was sending out letters, but not doing any follow-up inspections.

In some cases, it seems to have become a box-ticking exercise, says O’Callaghan.

When the RTB ran a compliance campaign in late 2021 around illegal rent increases – before annual registration of tenancies and better data – it sent out 2,700 letters but didn’t hear back from more than half of those, said a report at the time. The RTB didn’t respond to queries last year about whether it followed up on those ignored letters.

If the RTB’s big-brain computer crunches the numbers, and finds tens of thousands of apparent violations, what will happen next?

“At this early stage, we cannot provide specific details on the enforceability of automated detections or the necessity for manual verification and investigation,” an RTB spokesperson said.

Other changes

In its report published in May, the Housing Commission said the government needs to put in place “as a matter of urgency, an effective and proactive enforcement system that is proportionate and in line with the scale of the sector.”

“The regulation of rent or other parts of the rental system will not be effective without effective enforcement,” their report says.

It listed other measures, beyond data-led enforcement, that it said would help with compliance with rental-sector laws among tenants and landlords.

It called for the government to review the level of court supervision needed over enforcement actions, and for a fast-track system for court access to speed up the enforcement system.

It called for higher financial penalties for breaches, given the high rent levels. “This is to enable appropriate compensation to victims of breaches in the case of disputes and to act as an appropriate deterrent to serious misconduct, while ensuring there is balanced and proportionate application of sanctions and damages,” they said.

It called for the existing tenancies register – that is publicly available online – to be updated to include rents, the address of the tenancy, and the dates of tenancies. That way tenants could check what the tenant before them was paying.

At the committee meeting, Labour Senator Rebecca Moynihan asked interim RTB director Owen Keegan about the last of these. “Would a transparent rental price register help the RTB in ensuring compliance?”

Said Keegan, deferring to those beside him: “To be honest, I have never given it any thought. I do not know if my colleagues have a view on it but I do not.”

Said Crimin: “It is not something I have a view on either. I understand that there are a number of complexities. I do not know what they are but I understand they exist.”

“Speaking on behalf of the RTB, we are fundamentally committed to operating transparently where transparency is in the best interests of the public. That is fair to say but we do not have a view on this issue,” she said.