New rental law changes and RTB powers 14 September 2026

[Greenbook]

I'm pretty sure that Ireland is unusually slow, and I've already identified this as the major problem that needs fixing (and hazarded a guess at why it doesn't get fixed).

The problem in Ireland is that a tenant who knows what they are about can spin the eviction out for in or around three years.

It takes a while for the landlord to get the lower Tribunal hearing. The tenant can get a couple of these hearings adjourned because they are sick etc. Even though it is crystal clear the rent is owed, the tenant can appeal to the upper Tribunal. Again this will take a while and can be adjourned. Then it is on to the District Court and the Sheriff which again takes more time. MABs are now involved per the latest Residential Tenancy Act. 4

Plus if they go to Threshold, they will pore over the documents to find some slight flaw, which means that the whole complicated process must be started again from day 1.

Even at a low rent of say €1,000 per month, the landlord could be out of pocket €36,000 and that if before you take into account legal fees and damage to the house.

Added to this is that, per their latest Report, the top RTB Tribunal issue is rent arrears followed by overholding. There is probably a fair cohort of tenants out there just playing the system.

 

[patfert1]

Ireland: approx 2-6+ months

It may be the average, in the case of a tenant who doesn't fight the process. But if we are talking about arrears scenarios there is a high risk the tenant drags it out much longer as @Greenbook writes, and there are many supports for the tenant who chooses to do that, not to mention the RTB being very slow. In my dialogue with ChatGPT about England, that appeared to be much less of a risk.

 

[stormy]

Indeed, the attention given to form over substance in Ireland is extraordinary. Take the below case.

https://rtb.ie/disputes/dispute-outcomes-and-orders/adjudication-and-tribunal-orders/?_search=TR0001393 (TR0001393). Graiguecullen, Carlow. Applicant Landlord was not in a position to pay her mortgage. Tenant had a history of rent arrears and had been served with multiple notices in this regard.

The warning notice (drafted by a professional agency) stated €913 when €903 was actually owed (a €10 overstatement traceable to an €8 deposit credit the agent hadn't carried through from a few years prior). That discrepancy voided the entire termination (despite seemingly the correct amount being on the NOT itself (just not the warning letter)). The Tribunal itself spotted the discrepancy by checking the notice against the ledger, tenant not even in attendance.

So, if a warning letter form has amount due incorrect by just 1% - Everything restarts after waiting over a year since the arrears started. Fresh warning letter, fresh 28 days, fresh notice, fresh dispute, fresh appeal to Tribunal.


Reports conclusion below:
On the balance of probabilities and having considered all the evidence given at the hearing and the evidence submitted in advance of the hearing, the Tribunal is not satisfied that, as claimed in the warning letter dated 29 April 2025, rent arrears in the sum of €913 were owed by the Respondent Tenants when the said warning letter was sent. On the basis of the evidence before the Tribunal, the Tribunal finds that the correct amount of rent arrears owed at the material time was in-fact the sum of €903.
....
Accordingly, no act of default arises if the amount demanded to be paid is not in-fact due.

 

[Greenbook]

Indeed, the attention given to form over substance in Ireland is extraordinary. Take the below case.

I think though if the problem with form was on the tenant's side it would be overlooked.

Imagine a situation where a landlord makes a mistake in a rent setting form even though the rent is correct. So it is a form problem, not a substance problem. If the tenant takes the landlord to the RTB he will win, get the rent 'overpaid' paid back to him and the rent reduced going forward. The landlord will get fined.

However, if the tenant makes a small mistake in his calculations of how much rent is due back to him, I bet that won't impact on him at all. The RTB will say the substance is correct.

So tenants must be correct in substance. Form is largely irrelevant unless there is some huge mistake.

Landlords must be 100% correct in substance and 100% correct in form as well.

 

[Greenbook]

Tribunal Report here, the case is also reported in the Irish Times

Here's what happened, it is an AHB apartment:
1. Tenant moved in in 2022
2. Warning notice issued in June 2023. The tenant was breeding dangerous dogs in the property, faeces and urine were leaking into the apartment below
3. September 2024, anti-social behaviour started. Noise, parties, violent behaviour, guards called because there was a fight, a woman was dangling from a balcony and there was blood everwhere.
4. The local shop was robbed at knifepoint by the tenant and his friends.
5. The tenant vanished for several months, keep the keys but didn't pay rent. It seems he was in prison (he denies this).
6. There were two warning notices, and a termination notice was issued in December 2024.

The Tribunal decision is 26 April 2026 and on that date the tenant was still in occupation of the property. He can appeal to the upper Tribunal. The AHB, assuming it wins again there, if the tenant doesn't move out voluntarily, will have to go to the District Court and on to the Sheriff. It is now three years after the trouble started.

This is a well funded and well advised AHB - see the number of witnesses they had at the Tribunal (presumably they didn't issue an NoT after the dangerous dog breeding was discovered because they knew it was futile if the tenant claimed to have stopped the activity), yet three years later the tenant is still there.

It should take a couple of months to evict a tenant like this, not years.

 

[JoeRoberts]

This is a well funded and well advised AHB -

So it is effectively a govt agency suffering from its own laws. If there are more of these cases then the Govt may wake up.

 

[Greenbook]

So it is effectively a govt agency suffering from its own laws. If there are more of these cases then the Govt may wake up.

Yes, it is crazy. One government funded body (an AHB) using another government funded body (the RTB) to get a tenant out of an apartment. Both bodies are using taxpayer funds to do this and it takes years and costs more money due to the long timeframe involved and the give the tenant every chance, no matter how clear the case against him, approach of the government.

Meanwhile, while it takes years and huge taxpayer funded expense to get this criminal (assault, dangerous dogs, armed robbery) out of an apartment, the solution is to criminally prosecute landlords for mistakes in forms! The new fixed penalties are a gamechanger per the RTB!

 

[JoeRoberts]

the solution is to criminally prosecute landlords for mistakes in forms!

Would be interesting to see the AHB being prosecuted

 

[Greenbook]

Would be interesting to see the AHB being prosecuted

I think prosecution is only for the small private landlord.

 

[JoeRoberts]

think prosecution is only for the small private landlord.

Thats an extraordinary legal position if true

 

[Greenbook]

Thats an extraordinary legal position if true

I think that the legal position is that criminal prosecution applies equally to the AHBs and the private landlords.

However, I was reading an article in the Business Post this morning by Mandy Johnson of the large landlords lobby group. She said that the prevailing attitude is that public investors in housing are good, honest and reliable. Private investment (she was talking about the funds, but it applies equally to ordinary people as well) are dodgy and have to be managed and controlled. So the practical reality is that criminal prosecution will be used against the private landlord and not the public landlord.

I wonder would the Tribunal have been a enthusiatically in favour of the landlord in the dangerous dogs/assault/armed robbery case if the landlord had been some guy renting out a couple of apartments.

 

[stormy]

If there are more of these cases then the Govt may wake up.

There are loads and loads of cases like this. In the below (published over the past few months alone), the 7 day notice was valid, but the tenant was still in tenancy months later

TR0001493 (Iveagh Trust): tenant took a hammer into a neighbour's flat and assaulted them; CCTV; admitted. ~10 months to a possession order, still in situ at the hearing.

TR0001421 (Circle VHA): tenant threatened to "rip a neighbour's teenage son's head off" in a shop, then tried to lure him somewhere "with no cameras and no witnesses." Admitted it. ~10 months late, still there.

TR0001347 (Focus Housing): Greenbook's dogs/robbery case. ~19 months from warning notice to order.

TR0001059 (Respond): tenant brandished a knife, arrested by the Armed Response Unit, pleaded guilty. ~17 months still there.

TR0001047 (Co-operative Housing): tenant assaulted a heavily pregnant neighbour (emergency C-section); on video. ~12 months still there.

Thats an extraordinary legal position if true

A small private landlord is worse off than the AHB, because they don't have the in-house legal team and the stack of witnesses these AHBs turn up with. So the same grind that takes an AHB 2 years could take an unrepresented landlord longer, or defeat them on a technicality they didn't know about.

Another recent case that highlights this:
TR0001422 (Athy) was a private landlord who tried to deal with ASB (drugs (spamspamspam), rubbish, aggression), but served the 7-day notice on anonymous complaints and a video from a neighbour who didn't turn up to give evidence. The Tribunal struck it down: wrong track (it should have been the 28-day warning route), and the evidence was hearsay. He failed to evict.

And then another example again showing a private landlord dealing with ASB stuck because he didn't enforce fast enough.

TR0001197 (Longford), private landlord, whose tenant repeatedly abused and assaulted the downstairs neighbour (grabbed her, threw her to the floor, cut her neck; she had a heart attack from the stress and sent him 20+ emails). He served two notices of termination and still didn't get the tenant out. But because the Tribunal found he hadn't done enough to enforce his tenant's obligations, the neighbour sued him under s.15 and won €10,000 (off the landlord, not the tenant). And to make matters worse, s.15 only gives damages, so the RTB couldn't evict the tenant on the neighbour's complaint. Three years on, the landlord is €10k down, the abusive tenant is still upstairs, and the neighbour has money but no peace.

I'm not joking, these are all real cases. You couldn't make it up.

So the small private landlord is squeezed from both ends - move too fast on the wrong ASB track and the notice is void (Athy), or fail to force it through fast enough and you're personally liable to the neighbours for a tenant you couldn't remove.

 

[patfert1]

TR0001197 (Longford), private landlord, whose tenant repeatedly abused and assaulted the downstairs neighbour (grabbed her, threw her to the floor, cut her neck; she had a heart attack from the stress and sent him 20+ emails). He served two notices of termination and still didn't get the tenant out. But because the Tribunal found he hadn't done enough to enforce his tenant's obligations, the neighbour sued him under s.15 and won €10,000 (off the landlord, not the tenant). And to make matters worse, s.15 only gives damages, so the RTB couldn't evict the tenant on the neighbour's complaint. Three years on, the landlord is €10k down, the abusive tenant is still upstairs, and the neighbour has money but no peace.

@stormy you're doing sterling work trawling for these cases. (Ever think of reaching out to a journalist who might be interested in writing on this topic?) This final one you quote is truly a horror story, almost a Kafkaesque situation for the landlord.

As we have discussed here and elsewhere, I believe the government - if they are even sufficiently aware of such cases - do not have sufficient incentive to "do something" to address these kind of scenarios, because it would lead to evictions and resulting homelessness (no landlord would rent out to such a tenant if they are aware of the history) which then would be the government's problem to fix.

 

[Greenbook]

@stormy you're doing sterling work trawling for these cases. (Ever think of reaching out to a journalist who might be interested in writing on this topic?)

Yes @stormy, you did do sterling work. I doubt any journalist is interested though, too busy spreading the narrative that landlords are the bad ones constantly carrying out violent evictions and threatening our tenants to extract more rent.

I think if you did an analysis though, there are likely far more violent tenants than violent landlords. Yet rather than having a system which deals quickly with anti-social behaviour, deliberate non-payment of rent, the solution is to concentrate practically entirely on landlord mistakes in forms, small errors in calculating rent increases etc.

 

[patfert1]

I doubt any journalist is interested though, too busy spreading the narrative that landlords are the bad ones constantly carrying out violent evictions and threatening our tenants to extract more rent.

I don't think it's that the mainstream media want to push a specific narrative. They want stories that make good headlines and sell papers. A story about a litany of violent tenants who terrorise their neighbours and cannot be evicted would make just a good story as the one about the dodgy landlord.

 

[Greenbook]

I don't think it's that the mainstream media want to push a specific narrative. They want stories that make good headlines and sell papers. A story about a litany of violent tenants who terrorise their neighbours and cannot be evicted would make just a good story as the one about the dodgy landlord.

Then why do we practically never see these stories in print? The ones @stormy found are horrifying and that is just a small sample from recent Tribunal hearings.

At this stage there must be thousands of Tribunal reports about landlords trying and often failing to evict violent tenants who commit crimes and terrorise neighbours.

Practically all of the stuff published is a landlord failing to evict because of some fault in a form or an argument over withholding a deposit which feeds the bad and petty landlord narrative.

 

[patfert1]

Then why do we practically never see these stories in print? The ones @stormy found are horrifying and that is just a small sample from recent Tribunal hearings

As it happens the IT reports on it today.

Landlord whose tenant caused ‘stress’ to heart attack victim must pay €10,000

RTB

www.irishtimes.com

 

[Greenbook]

As it happens the IT reports on it today.

Practically a first, I'd imagine

Still, this does seem to be getting more traction now, perhaps there are more violent anti-social tenants out there these days. Article here from Kerry about AHBs ignoring and not dealing with anti-social tenants. I doubt there is any case where the AHB has had to compensate the neighbours unlike the private landlord in the heart attack case.

 

[patfert1]

Practically a first, I'd imagine

The media are always up for publishing a story with a bit of spice like someone being attacked. I don't think they care who attacked who.
But remember we are not talking about investigative journalists here. These journalists are instructed by the editor to write an article about topic X, after that they move onto topic Z. I have some personal experience of reaching out to journalists to try to get something published and never even got a reply despite they had written about that very topic recently. I concluded they had no personal interest in the topic they wrote about - it was simply a task assigned to them. An investigative journalist on the other hand could get a really good story out of abusive tenants who cannot be put out - there's no shortage of them out there (the abusive tenants, that is, unfortunately not many investigative journalists).

 

[Greenbook]

But remember we are not talking about investigative journalists here. These journalists are instructed by the editor to write an article about topic X, after that they move onto topic Z. I have some personal experience of reaching out to journalists to try to get something published and never even got a reply despite they had written about that very topic recently. I concluded they had no personal interest in the topic they wrote about - it was simply a task assigned to them.

That is the impression I get as well.

When the RTB numbers come out, RTE and all the newspapers just copy and paste the press release. The RTB are asked to comment and that is copied and pasted in as well. Some comment is made about how terrible the situation is for tenants and that is that.

No journalist interogates the numbers produced by the RTB. They are happily crowing that tenancy and landlord numbers are increasing, not realising that this is due to the inclusion of cost-rentals and previously unregistered landlords.

Likewise they parrot that we have the highest number of landlords and the highest number of tenants since the 'series began'. No questioning of what the 'series began' means. We have 105k landlords at the moment, in 2019, for example, it was 170k. We have 240k tenancies now, in 2019 it was 303k.

No investigation or questioning of what the RTB says and this creates a completely false impression of what is happening in the PRS.