I’ve never registered any of them with the RTB
Was I wrong?
Short answer: probably yes, and the registration fee is the least of it. There are two separate routes out of the Act and they need to be kept apart, because they pull in opposite directions on your facts.
Route 1: the Act doesn't apply because you also reside there (s.3(2)(g))
"(g) a dwelling within which the landlord also resides"
Residential Tenancies Act 2004, s.3(2)(g)
This is the weaker route. It's a question of fact, you can have more than one residence, and it's your home. But the test applies during the letting, and from September to June you're there 4 nights a month with a home in London. Worse, on your own account (#7) you and the occupant are never in the house at the same time. The cases where s.3(2)(g) has worked are shared-living cases:
- Tully v PRTB [2014] IEHC 554: the landlord lived in the house full time and ran a B&B from it. The tenant had a bedroom and shared everything else with her.
- https://rtb.ie/disputes/dispute-outcomes-and-orders/adjudication-and-tribunal-orders/?_search=TR0001285 (TR0001285) (Galway, May 2026), the closest case to yours. The landlord was away 3-4 days a week caring for his very ill mother nearby, so he was in the dwelling 3-4 nights a week. He kept a locked bedroom there, and his driving licence, motor insurance, bank, mortgage and polling card were all at the address. Critically, he owned no other property and there was no other dwelling available to him. The tenant swore he never spent a night there. It was for him to prove he resided there (as in Leonard v McHugh, TR44, where the landlord failed on the evidence), and he lost at adjudication, EUR4,700 against him. It took a solicitor and a Tribunal appeal to get the finding that the RTB had no jurisdiction.
To be fair, 1285 helps you in two respects: absence "on a significant number of occasions" didn't negate residence, and the Tully test (landlord keeps full access to and use of the whole house bar the tenant's room) is one you'd pass on paper. But that landlord was in the house most of the week, had nowhere else to live, and still needed two hearings and a solicitor. You're there a quarter as often and your other home is where you actually live.
Route 2: it's a licence, not a tenancy, because there's no exclusive possession
This is Greenbook's point and it's your better argument, because the absence obligation is real and has been operated for ten years, not a clause on paper. Two problems with it though.
First, possession is not presence. The occupant's room, belongings and key stay in place through your four days. They are absent, not dispossessed. That's a different thing from a licensee who can be moved between rooms or whose room is serviced (the hallmarks in https://rtb.ie/disputes/dispute-outcomes-and-orders/adjudication-and-tribunal-orders/?_search=TR0001479 (TR0001479), where an agreement calling itself a licence 45 times was still a tenancy).
Second, the Tribunals have already dealt with a reserved right for the landlord to come and stay. In O'Sullivan v Conlan (TR1113-000500, in the Law Society article patfert1 linked), the agreement let the landlord's family stay for matches, the summer and Christmas, and they did, 18 days in 20 months. The Tribunal didn't treat that as negating a tenancy. It severed the clause as a breach of the landlord's s.12(1)(a) duty of peaceful and exclusive occupation. Your clause is the same clause, exercised about three times as often. So the likely outcome isn't "licence". It's "tenancy, and the
four-day arrangement is itself a breach". Damages for breach of peaceful occupation are real money. TR0001572 (Listowel) cost the landlord EUR750 for repeated unnotified entries, even though the tenant was in arrears. TR0001483 (Oldcastle) was EUR7,000 plus the deposit for a lock change. In TR0001427 the landlord paid EUR1,000 for a fortnight of replacing floor covering that had some moths. The Tribunal accepted he acted promptly, but found the works "resulted in a material loss of peaceful occupation". And the Galway landlord in TR0001285 (above) had EUR4,000 awarded against him at adjudication, partly for coming and going from a room let. That award stood until he proved on appeal that he lived there. If two weeks of necessary repairs is worth EUR1,000, four days a month for ten months a year is not going to be cheaper. With ten years of tenants, each could bring their own claim, subject to the six-year limitation period.
The Maynooth split Pauley quotes doesn't rescue this either. Those cases were about whether one room in an eight-bed house share is a "dwelling" at all. Your occupant has the whole house for 3.5 weeks a month.
If the Act applies
Greenbook's instinct to register is right, but not for the reason given. Tenancies starting after 11 June 2022 are of unlimited duration. The real exposure, in order of cost:
- Rent. Dublin has been a Rent Pressure Zone since December 2016. If you set the rent afresh each September, every tenant before March 2026 may have paid above the s.19 cap (the reset rules for new tenancies changed on 1 March 2026). A tenant can bring that claim whether or not you registered.
- Part 4. Each letting ran 10 months, so each tenant had security of tenure after six
months. The June exit has only worked because every tenant agreed. The year one doesn't, you need a valid s.34 ground (own occupation, with the s.35 statutory declaration) and the full s.66 notice period, and your summer is gone. A tenant who's happy to go should serve their own written notice.
- Registration. s.134, within a month of commencement; a late application attracts penalties. While unregistered you can't refer a dispute to the RTB, so if a tenant stops paying they have a forum and you don't.
Can 2 people sign a ‘contract’ and both indicate they don’t wish to abide by RTB regulations ?
No. Once there's a tenancy, the Act says so in terms. For Part 4 (security of tenure and termination):
"(1) No provision of any lease, tenancy agreement, contract or other agreement (whether entered into before, on or after the relevant date) may operate to vary, modify or restrict in any way a provision of this Part."
Residential Tenancies Act 2004, s.54(1)
Section 18(1) does the same for the landlord's and tenant's core obligations in ss.12 and 16. The only way you can contract is in the tenant's favour (s.18(2), s.26).
Registration (s.134) and the RPZ rent cap (s.19) aren't contractual terms at all; they're statutory duties on the landlord, so the tenant has nothing to waive. A tenant who signs "I don't want RTB protection" can still refer a dispute the day after.
The one thing a signed agreement can do is help on the earlier question: is there a tenancy at all? In https://rtb.ie/disputes/dispute-outcomes-and-orders/adjudication-and-tribunal-orders/?_search=TR0001285 (TR0001285) the Tribunal took account of a document headed "Rent a Room Agreement", but said in terms it was "not determinative" and looked at how the arrangement actually worked. When the reality is a tenancy, the label loses: in https://rtb.ie/disputes/dispute-outcomes-and-orders/adjudication-and-tribunal-orders/?_search=TR0001479 (TR0001479), an agreement calling itself a licence 45 times was still a tenancy.
And the courts' more contractual approach in commercial cases, as set out in the Law Society article linked above, rests on both sides having independent legal advice. That's unlikely for someone renting a room.
So write down what the arrangement actually is, and make sure it's true. Don't expect a waiver clause to do anything.
I’m very choosy who I rent to.
Most accommodation providers are, including plenty of those who end up before the RTB. Tenants don't even need to turn up. There are many cases where the RTB has found against the landlord on its own initiative, on points the tenant never raised.
