New rental law changes and RTB powers 14 September 2026

[TomEdison]

But any customer caught shoplifting is subject to criminal prosecution.

Sure. And any tenant who deliberately sets fire to the premises is subject to prosecution for arson.

These are aspects of general criminal law. It's an offence to set fire to a house even whether or not you're not the tenant (or indeed the owner). It's an offence to steal goods from a shop whether or not you're not a customer. This has nothing to do with the regulatory regime for the business activity of selling goods/renting property.

(If you get a judgment against a tenant for arrears of rent, I don't see why that wouldn't be published in Stubbs, same as a judgment againt any other creditor. What's to stop it? Stubbs doesn't care what the debt relates to; SFAIK the only criterion is a court judgment for a monetary sum.)

 

[Greenbook]

Sure. And any tenant who deliberately sets fire to the premises is subject to prosecution for arson.

Realistically if a tenant refuses to pay rent, the landlord hasn't a hope of collecting it from him. Best the landlord can do is spend two or three years getting the tenant evicted. In theory, if he can track down the tenant's new address he can pursue him through the courts for the arrears. 99.99% of landlords don't bother. Either they can't trace the tenant (the RTB is no help there) or are correctly advised that they will just be throwing good money after bad. They will never see a penny.

Same for deliberate damage to a house. The guards will say it is a civil matter and won't get involved. The landlord is left to pursue the tenant who has likely vanished, a hiding to nothing.

I listened to the RTB webinar this morning. I'm lost. All sorts of different rules for different forms when it comes to when, where and how these pieces of paper have to be served and filed. If I make a mistake, I'm facing a fine and possible criminal prosecution. It is completely unbalanced.

Plus it is very clear from the webinar that the RTB regard me as a criminal and up to something. If they threatened me with a fixed payment notices, I have to rectify my misbehaviour. What if they have the wrong end of the stick. I got the clear impression that didn't enter their thinking. Likewise, an admonition at the end to come forward with details of our unregistered tenancies and other misbehaviours.

 

[stormy]

This is standard in regulatory schemes. It's the providers of goods and services who are regulated, not the consumers. Think of all the obligations imposed on publicans, or bookmakers, or the sellers of goods by retail, versus the obligations those regulatory regimes impose on customers.

Several problems with this / the follow on.

First, it isn't true even of your own examples. Take a Publican. A drunken patron who refuses to leave licensed premises commits an offence, as does a customer who purchases alcohol for an under 18. Where the customer can do real damage, the Oireachtas has never hesitated to legislate for the customer.

Second, the RTA is not a providers only scheme. Section 16 imposes statutory obligations on tenants (pay the rent, no anti-social behaviour, no damage beyond wear and tear, allow access, etc). The Oireachtas chose to regulate both parties. My complaint isn't that consumers escape provider style regulation. It's that within the same Act, only the accomodation providers obligations attract fixed payment notices, criminal convictions, class A fines, 12 month prison sentences and a 3 year look-back. The tenant's s.16 obligations attract no sanction of any kind. Can you name another Irish statute that imposes duties for both parties and attaches penalties to one side only?

Third, general criminal law doesn't really help for the majority of the issues that arise. Arson and theft, I agree but those are rare. The common tenant issues (non-payment while retaining exclusive possession, overholding after a valid notice, refusing access) are not criminal offences. Gardaí treat them as civil, and the only civil route runs through the RTB (on their painfully slow, sometimes multi-year, timelines). A landlord who mis-serves a piece of paper can now be convicted. A tenant who overholds rent free for two years commits no offence and the official sanction is to repay what they owe as a multi year, interest free installment plan. Is there a retail equivalent / comparison of a customer lawfully retaining the goods and the shop for a few years? And then as a sanction giving the goods back piecemeal over several years?

 

[Greenbook]

A tenant who overholds rent free for two years commits no offence and the official sanction is to repay what they owe as a multi year, interest free installment plan. Is there a retail equivalent / comparison of a customer lawfully retaining the goods and the shop for a few years? And then as a sanction giving the goods back piecemeal over several years?

Or indeed a guest booking into a hotel room for a couple of nights and deciding to stay on indefinitely without paying. The hotel would quite shortly turf the guest and his belongings out on his ear.

The landlord in the same circumstances can only pursue the years long RTB/District Court/Sheriff route while at the same time repairing and maintaining the dwelling, replacing applicances etc. and allowing the tenant to have full use and occupation of the property.

 

[MugsGame]

Can you name another Irish statute that imposes duties for both parties and attaches penalties to one side only?

Might this asymmetry be unconstitutional, particularly as it impacts property rights? Although the State would likely argue the social justice and common good exception.

 

[TomEdison]

Realistically if a tenant refuses to pay rent, the landlord hasn't a hope of collecting it from him . . . In theory, if he can track down the tenant's new address he can pursue him through the courts for the arrears. 99.99% of landlords don't bother. Either they can't trace the tenant (the RTB is no help there) or are correctly advised that they will just be throwing good money after bad. They will never see a penny.

That's not a problem with the regulatory regime, though; it's a feature of the business you've entered. It;s a business that involves extending unsecured credit to people who, because of the nature of the housing market in Ireland, are disproportionately from the less economically secure sectors of society. So a fairly high level of bad debts is to be expected.

Might this asymmetry be unconstitutional, particularly as it impacts property rights? Although the State would likely argue the social justice and common good exception.

It's inevitable that a regulatory regime for the letting of property is going to affect property rights. And the assymmetry between obligations placed on providers and obligations placed on consumers is, as already pointed out, pretty standard for regulatory regimes generally.

A regulatory regime for the residential letting market can be unconstitional — large parts of the Rent Restrictions Act 1960 were struck down by the Supreme Court in 1981 in the Blake and Madigan cases. In its judgment the court set out the constitutional principles and parameters that any scheme would have to respect, so if you want to challenge the current scheme, there's your starting point. However it was of course also the starting point for the people who designed the current scheme, so there's unlikely to be a flagrant violation. But enough time has passed since Blake and Madigan, plus the regulatory regime today affects aspects of landlording that weren't addressed in the 1960 legislation, that there migth well be a good case to be made for unconstitutionality.

But I don't think the fact that there's an asymmetry between the obligations placed on landlords and those placed on tenants is going to be anythink like enough to get you there.

 

[stormy]

That's not a problem with the regulatory regime, though; it's a feature of the business you've entered. It;s a business that involves extending unsecured credit to people who, because of the nature of the housing market in Ireland, are disproportionately from the less economically secure sectors of society. So a fairly high level of bad debts is to be expecte

The credit exposure isn't a feature of the business. It's a creation of the regime. Every other supplier on credit can stop supplying on default (bank stops advancing, the shop stops serving, the utility disconnects). In Ireland, an accommodation provider must continue supplying full use of the asset for the years the termination process takes, is barred from self-help, and the only security permitted - the deposit - is capped by statute at one month's rent. So the regime caps the security, then compels the extension of further credit throughout its own process. Most of the bad debt accrues during, and because of, this mandated procedure. That's regulatory design, not the nature of letting. Food and clothing are every bit as essential as shelter, and their customers include the same cohort, yet no statute compels the supermarket or the clothing retailer to keep supplying a defaulting customer for years, on credit, with security capped and self-help prohibited.

Your point in relation to tenants being disproportionately from the less economically secure sectors of society also doesn't sit well with the rest of the statute book. Where tenants genuinely are economically insecure, the State already stands behind the rent through a myriad of schemes. Take HAP, paid directly by the local authority. Here the landlord is expressly forbidden from managing the very risk you say is inherent. The Equal Status Act makes it unlawful to decline a tenant on the housing-assistance ground, the deposit is capped at one month's rent, and termination on default takes years.

So, the regime prohibits selecting against a risk, prohibits securing against it, prohibits exiting it promptly. This kind of transfer is what failed in Blake. Blake is authority that social costs are to be borne by the community at large, not conscripted from one selected class of private citizens without compensation.

And the assymmetry between obligations placed on providers and obligations placed on consumers is, as already pointed out, pretty standard for regulatory regimes generally.

Again I would ask, can you name one other Irish statute / regime that enumerates duties for both parties and attaches penalties to one side only?

 

[TomEdison]

@stormy, you make some good points. I think the key problem with the residential lettings licensing regime is the difficulty in terminating the relationship when the tenant is in signficant default and, if there was a reform that cries out to be made, that would be it. My unworthy suspicion is that this isn't because of a bias against landlords or in favour of tenants; it's because the homeless impose obligations on housing authorities, so the fundamental aim here is to protect taxpayers, by avoiding at all costs someone being rendered homeless.

So a cost that ought to be socialised is imposed on landlords. But I don't think the answer lies in imposing more obligations or penalties on tenants. Considerations of justice aside, I think that would be ineffective, because it misses the point. The incentive for the state would still be to make enforcing those obligations very difficult.

Again I would ask, can you name one other Irish statute / regime that enumerates duties for both parties and attaches penalties to one side only?

i've already pointed out that this is the norm for regulatory regimes - obligations are imposed on providers, not consumers. How many examples do you want? The Medical Practitioners Act imposes lots of obligations backed up by penalties, on doctors; none on patients. The Nurses and Midwives Act, ditto. The same goes for solicitors, barristers, architects, estate agents, financial service firms, insurance companies, dentists, telecomms providers and more besides.

It's probably easier to count the regulatory regimes that do impose obligations and penalties on the customer. The Licensing Acts create offences for customers, backed up by penalties - e.g. being drunk on licensed premises and refusing to leave when asked; disorderly conduct on licensed premises. The taxi legislation does create some offences for customers. There might be one or two other examples but, honestly, they don't leap to mind. And even in these cases the overwhelming burden of obligation is still imposed on the provider; the customer's obligations as a customer are fairly marginal.

 

[Greenbook]

That's not a problem with the regulatory regime, though; it's a feature of the business you've entered. It;s a business that involves extending unsecured credit to people who, because of the nature of the housing market in Ireland, are disproportionately from the less economically secure sectors of society. So a fairly high level of bad debts is to be expected.

Yes, that is the nature of the business. But instead of the regulatory regime allowing us to exit that situation pretty quickly, it facilitates the tenant dragging it on for years without paying any rent. If I, as a landlord, am getting work done on a house, if I stop paying the builder, he'll stop the work pretty quickly. He doesn't have to continue working while I don't pay him. As a landlord, I have to leave a non-paying tenant in situ possibly for years and all this is facilitated by the legal regime and the RTB. If I don't serve some piece of paper at exactly the right time, two years into it, I'm back to square one.

And yes, this is a feature of the PRS which is why people are getting out.

i've already pointed out that this is the norm for regulatory regimes - obligations are imposed on providers, not consumers. How many examples do you want? The Medical Practitioners Act imposes lots of obligations backed up by penalties, on doctors; none on patients. The Nurses and Midwives Act, ditto. The same goes for solicitors, barristers, architects, estate agents, financial service firms, insurance companies, dentists, telecomms providers and more besides.

But a solicitor can get rid of a non-paying client pretty easily. They just refuse to do further work. Likewise a solicitor can refuse to act any longer for a client who lies or is deceitful. We landlords can't.

I think the calls to penalise tenants is just rhetoric. What landlords are looking for is a fair and balanced system. Most tenants are fine, but a percentage are awful. They deliberately don't pay rent, damage the property and are dishonest towards their landlord. A landlord, who likely isn't 'rich', who just has one property and a mortgage, is stuck in this situation for years with the RTB acting against him and assisting the deliquent tenant.

No other business has to put up with that. If I was stealing in Penneys, they might not bother criminally prosecuting me, but they would take their goods back and would have the right to bar me from that particular Penneys. The landlord must continue to supply the service for years on end for free and put up with all the trouble from the deceitful tenant.

I think you are correct though. The new lifelong and six year tenancies are part of this. Homelessness is a big headache for the Department of Housing and the Local Authorities. Solving it is being pushed on us - the eviction bans in the first RTA 2026 and the regulatory regime which actively prevents us from evicting a non-paying, misbehaving tenants.

 

[stormy]

So a cost that ought to be socialised is imposed on landlords.

Yes, and this explanation makes the constitutional position worse. If the purpose of the termination regime is to shield the Exchequer from its statutory homelessness obligations by keeping the person housed at a private citizen's expense, that isn't incidental regulation of a market. It's the deliberate discharge of a State liability through selected private property, without compensation.

The Medical Practitioners Act imposes lots of obligations backed up by penalties, on doctors; none on patients.

These answer a different question. The Medical Practitioners Act imposes no statutory duties on patients. It is a genuinely provider only scheme, so there's no asymmetry within it. My question was for a statute that enumerates duties for both parties and sanctions one side, which is what the RTA does with s.16. The list still stands at zero? And we must point out what your examples have in common: the solicitor can stop acting for a non-paying client, the consultant can decline the next appointment, the telecoms provider can cut the line. Every provider on the list can terminate supply on default. The accommodation provider is the only one on it who cannot.

It's probably easier to count the regulatory regimes that do impose obligations and penalties on the customer. ....

And even in these cases the overwhelming burden of obligation is still imposed on the provider; the customer's obligations as a customer are fairly marginal.

The customer side is nothing like as bare as this suggests. The general dishonesty offences do the work everywhere. A diner, hotel guest, or petrol customer who leaves without paying commits making off without payment. A guest who checks in never intending to pay commits obtaining services by deception. Fare evasion on the train or bus is an offence. Watching television without paying the licence is criminally prosecuted thousands of times a year. And it runs straight through your own list: the patient who obtains a prescription by deception, the insurance customer who makes a fraudulent claim, the borrower who lies on a loan application — all criminally liable as customers. So across the economy the customer's payment obligation is backed by the criminal law wherever dishonesty is involved, and by the provider's right to stop supplying everywhere else.
The tenant is the unique exception. Rent arrears can never engage those offences (as rent is not a spot payment). And of course the housing provider is statutorily barred from ceasing supply.

 

[TomEdison]

The customer side is nothing like as bare as this suggests. The general dishonesty offences do the work everywhere.

Yeah, but the general criminal offences are not part of the regulatory regime; that's the point.

And general criminal offences apply in the landlord/tenant relationship exactly as they do in other regulated business activities. A tenant who makes off with the landlord's washing machine can be charged with theft, for example.

(And I think you have a somewhat unrealistic view of the practical scope of the criminal law in other regulated business environments. There is an offence of obtaining services by deception, but it applies in the landlord/tenant context exactly as much as it applies in the hotel/guest or restaurant/diner contexts. I don't think it's prosecuted any more often in those contexts than it is in the landlord/tenant context, because for a successful prosecution you need to prove, beyond reasonable doubt, that the customer did not intend to pay at the time he entered into the contract, which is very difficult. Similarly the number of people charged with fraud in relation to prescriptions or loan applications. If the facts are there and the evidence is available there is nothing to prevent a fraud charge in relation to something done by a tenant (or indeed by a landlord); the reason such charges are rarely brought has nothing to do with any kind of carve-out that takes the landlord/tenant relationship outside the scope of the criminal law. There is no carve-out of that kind.)

 

[DannyBoyD]

don't see why that wouldn't be published in Stubbs,

I referenced Stubbs as a 'type' of listing.

Tenants who default / non-compliant etc. should, in my view, have all their details made available to registered property owners.

If I buy a used car, I can get a report & find out if its got outstanding finance attached, insurance write off and so on.

But I'm expected to hand over the keys to a valuable property with less risk mitigation than a car rental.

 

[Colin4444]

This is standard in regulatory schemes. It's the providers of goods and services who are regulated, not the consumers. Think of all the obligations imposed on publicans, or bookmakers, or the sellers of goods by retail, versus the obligations those regulatory regimes impose on customers.

But can they be classified as a criminal if they make a simple mistake?

But any customer caught shoplifting is subject to criminal prosecution.

Excellent point..

Thinks its safe to say they do discriminate against landlords... the expression 'bite the hand that feeds you' comes to mind.. in the midst of a crisis they are forcing the very ppl they need, out...

 

[Colin4444]

And any tenant who deliberately sets fire to the premises is subject to prosecution for arson.

my God, going from simple stealing to setting a house on fire, how to compare applies and oranges

So let me get this straight, as a shopowner, if someone steals I can get them prosecuted.. as a landlord, not paying rent, destroying property is all fine, the only way to get tenant prosecuted is if they set the house on fire...

 

[Greenbook]

So let me get this straight, as a shopowner, if someone steals I can get them prosecuted.. as a landlord, not paying rent, destroying property is all fine, the only way to get tenant prosecuted is if they set the house on fire...

I'd say there would be no prosecution for setting the house on fire and the tenant would be quite safe despite deliberately doing so.

If the tenant has a brain in his head he'll leave a chip pan on a turned on cooker or flamable clothes on top of an electric heater go out for the day and claim that it was a careless accident.

 

[TomEdison]

But can they be classified as a criminal if they make a simple mistake?

Oh, yeah. This is pretty common in regulatory regimes - very precise, hard-coded requirements that are what lawyers call "strict liablity" offences - you contravene this rule, you have committed an offence. Your state of mind - intention, negligence, recklessness, ignorance, whatever - doesn't enter into it.

You may think that this is a good thing or a bad thing. But do not think that it is a thing unique to the landlord/tenant environment, because it certainly isn't.

 

[Colin4444]

Oh, yeah. This is pretty common in regulatory regimes - very precise, hard-coded requirements that are what lawyers call "strict liablity" offences - you contravene this rule, you have committed an offence. Your state of mind - intention, negligence, recklessness, ignorance, whatever - doesn't enter into it.

You may think that this is a good thing or a bad thing. But do not think that it is a thing unique to the landlord/tenant environment, because it certainly isn't.

Again, are you comparing apples and oranges?

These requirements, are they as simple as putting a wrong number / date on a form, or are they of a more serious nature i.e. restaurant not meeting safety / cleanliness standards?

 

[Colin4444]

I'd say there would be no prosecution for setting the house on fire and the tenant would be quite safe despite deliberately doing so.

If the tenant has a brain in his head he'll leave a chip pan on a turned on cooker or flamable clothes on top of an electric heater go out for the day and claim that it was a careless accident.

With ya there..

Cant understand ppl trying to back / support government policy, it is plain to anyone with a brain that landlords are vilified / discriminated against.. The fact that we are in a crisis just makes this discrimination even worse, as it affects the ppl its trying to protect ...

 

[TomEdison]

These requirements, are they as simple as putting a wrong number / date on a form, or are they of a more serious nature i.e. restaurant not meeting safety / cleanliness standards?

You'll find many examples of both. But "bureaucratic" requirements about e.g., providing speciified information, meeting specified deadlines, etc, are classic cases where a strict liability approach is often taken — "We don't really care why this was served late, or that item of information was mistated; it was your responsibility to give the correct information by the correct time. We're not interested in hearing about how the dog ate your homework".

The bottom line for me is that landlords don't have a legitimate interest in being allowed to fill out forms in a sloppy way or miss deadlines. But they do have a legitimate interest in being able to end a dysfunctional tenancy relationship, cut their losses, and put the property back on the market. The key to any meaningful reform of the syatem has to be an insistence on enabling an early and effective response to significant default by the tenant.

I think things like the difficulty in recovering arrears of unpaid rent are genuine; they arise out of the nature of the business; they are not the outcome of a supposed anti-landlord bias; there is no stroke-of-the-pen legislation, or set of penalties that can be imposed on defaulting tenants, which can magic them away. The proper response to that is to minimise the likelihood of signficant arrears accumulationg by providing a timely and effective termination and eviction process.

 

[Colin4444]

I think things like the difficulty in recovering arrears of unpaid rent are genuine; they arise out of the nature of the business; they are not the outcome of a supposed anti-landlord bias; there is no stroke-of-the-pen legislation, or set of penalties that can be imposed on defaulting tenants, which can magic them away. The proper response to that is to minimise the likelihood of signficant arrears accumulationg by providing a timely and effective termination and eviction process.

But why are all the rules to protect tenants and nothing for landlords?

Why would you think being able to collect unpaid rent as "the nature of the business". I understand ppl dont pay for things, but even after getting a court ruling in the landlords favour, their is still no way the landlord will see a penny..

"providing a timely and effective termination and eviction process." but their not even providing this?

Can you not see, their is nothing there to protect the landlord... tenants overhold, dont pay rent, destroy property.. the landlord is powerless to do anything, and if they do get anywhere it takes years... and if you see this as the process working, they we have a different definition of working