RTB Case studies

[JamieB_]

What age were they? We sold and downsized for health issues. Renting with lift, parking, in a city, gardens not our responsibility… will have to downsize again though. This is hard. Moving is difficult, it’s also emotional. I most certainly will not be moving in my eighties. My final move in my 60’s will be Ireland, to something age proof, no stairs, couldn’t imagine in my 80’s moving into Temple Bar bustle. I had a look at those flats and their location, very unappealing. But fantastic for younger people working in the city.

80 and 83. He died at 85 and she is still healthier than I am.

 

[Greenbook]

In my rental I have silverfish periodically. They are coming from the drains. I hate them. I deal with them. It’s not an infestation. It’s not my landladies fault. It’s life. The idea of me leaving because of them is nuts, suing my landlord laughable.

Exactly and one of the claims was that they had to destroy all their clothes and weret looking for compensation for the cost of new clothes. All they could show was one picture of 5 silverfish.

The RTB panders to a lot of nonsense. Thank you for highlighting such cases.

That is the problem, it panders to a lot of nonsense and while the silverfish tenants lost, the approach of the Tribunals overall seems to be to send the tenants away with some cash no matter how minor or exaggerated the problem.

In my rental I have silverfish periodically. They are coming from the drains. I hate them. I deal with them. It’s not an infestation. It’s not my landladies fault. It’s life. The idea of me leaving because of them is nuts, suing my landlord laughable.

The approach in Ireland is that the landlord is responsible for absolutely everything. We've seen that especially with the anti-social behaviour cases. The tenant is acting anti-socially but suffers no sanction. The landlord gets punished for 'not doing enough' to police the tenant's behaviour. It's not taken into account that the tenant may be a terrifying thug. One tenant robbed a shop at knifepoint and tried to throw a woman off a balcony. It's also not taken into account that this may just be two neighbours who don't get on and are now making accusations of anti-social behaviour against each other, that's often impossible to sort out or put a stop to.

The Tribunal never stands back and says is the landlord really responsible for all this or what is actually going on here.

 

[patfert1]

Reading about all these RTB tribunal cases leads me to conclude that the landlord is essentially held to similar standards like hotel accommodation. But with stronger penalties.

 

[stormy]

Reading about all these RTB tribunal cases leads me to conclude that the landlord is essentially held to similar standards like hotel accommodation. But with stronger penalties.

Pat, I'd love to be treated like a hotel.

• Check-out time. A hotel guest leaves when the booking ends. No Part 4, no indefinite tenancy, no 224-day notice, no statutory declaration.
• Pricing. A hotel charges whatever the market will bear tonight. No 2% cap, no rent review form, no refund back to the first euro if you get the paperwork wrong.
• Non-payment. A guest who doesn't pay is out the same day and the bill goes on the card on file. Nobody gives him eighty months to settle it.
• Damage. Trash the room and it's charged to the card. No one-month deposit cap, no proving it line by line a few years later.
• Bad behaviour. A guest who threatens the neighbouring room is gone that night. The hotel doesn't pay the neighbour €10,000 because the guest wouldn't leave.
• Repairs. Pipe bursts, the guest is moved to another room and maybe gets a free breakfast. Nobody's awarded €1,000 for the disruption of the plumber.
• The owner's own room. A hotelier can stay in his own hotel whenever he likes. He not his family are never barred from it, and nobody sends him a bill for not ringing a former guest the day his husband died.
• Paperwork. No registration of every guest with a regulator, no same-day-or-seven-day copy rules, no criminal offence for getting a form wrong.

Hotel standards, with hotel rights, would be a serious step up.

 

[patfert1]

Hotel standards, with hotel rights, would be a serious step up.

Agreed.

Incidentally, regarding the FOI request we discussed earlier for the guidance issued to decision makers at the RTB.
I found such a request in Q4 2024.

https://rtb.ie/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Freedom_of_Information_Disclosure_Log_Q4_2024.pdf

Request FOI 83 24. It's well-worded, contains many parts. It was Part-Granted. It is not stated which parts were granted.

Requested the following:

• the qualifying criteria to be appointed as an RTB Adjudicator or Tribunal member (“decision makers” for ease in this request)
• all documentation published and/or provided to candidates for the roles of decision makers in the last 10 years.
• a copy of all guidance and documentation on conflict of interest and bias in decision making in the RTB
• all training materials provided to decision makers on appointment
• all guidance and documentation (including expenditure) on the use of outside counsel in thereview of draft decisions of decision makers, if any
... (continued)

 

[Wavelly]

It's also not taken into account that this may just be two neighbours who don't get on and are now making accusations of anti-social behaviour against each other, that's often impossible to sort out or put a stop to.

I agree. I mentioned on another thread that I have found myself in the situation where a neighbour of my tenant has tracked down my home address and written to me asking that I take action for the unsocial behaviour of my tenant (complaining of noise, parking in his spot etc). I have never met my tenant, the tenancy is fully managed by a letting agent. The agents contacted the tenants about the complaints, and then received a reply from the tenants complaining about harassment from the neighbour, taking photos of them coming and going .

It sounds like it’s mostly just two neighbours who don’t get on, yet I (who has never met either of them) am somehow expected to resolve their differences or risk being brought to the RTB. I don’t get on with my neighbour but we both own our properties so we have the choice to either move or put up with it!

 

[stormy]

Financially struggling 80-year-old didn't call tenant on the DAY her husband died. RTB says she owes him €19,522 for his bigger, pricier new home

TheJournal has now run the same case: "Landlord ordered to pay almost €20,000 after evicting tenant and using apartment for short-term lets."

Same two problems as the Irish Times version. It gives his rent as "€1,200 per month" — the rent was €1,768, he paid a share, and that's the whole reason the award ran €6,000 past what he claimed. And it says the tenancy "would have run until 2027," when that's just where the Tribunal stopped counting.

It also reproduces the report's own contradiction without noticing: in one paragraph the notice was for "a family member," in another for "her own occupation."

Left out again: "not in good financial circumstances," the second bereavement, and 90 days to pay.

And neither outlet mentions the parts of the decision that should trouble anyone, landlord or tenant:

• The clock started the day her husband died. The Tribunal fixed 18 May 2025 — the date of his death — as the day she should have offered the flat back. Not a week later, not after the funeral. That day.
• He got more than he asked for. €10,584 claimed for rent; €17,022.50 awarded.
• A bigger flat, paid for by her. He moved from a share of a €1,768 flat to a two-bed, two-bath at €2,650, alone. Her representative raised it; the Tribunal said that without figures it could make no finding, and charged her the full difference.
• Eleven months of future rent. Run out to May 2027 in a tenancy he'd already left on a valid notice.
• Anxiety that pre-dated the wrong. €2,500 for a condition whose treatment began in March 2025 — before the date the Tribunal itself says she did anything wrong.
• Ninety days to pay. Tenants who owe landlords get 80 months (TR0001417) or 16 years (DR0919-57065).
• Not even deductible. Damages to a former tenant aren't an allowable rental expense, so she pays out of taxed income; he receives it tax-free.

Two national outlets, same report, same omissions. Neither says what the rent actually was. Neither says he got more than he asked for. Every fact that cuts her way is missing from both.

 

[Pauley]

€2500 for anxiety? Just how are the RTB qualified to put a value on "anxiety"? They shouldn't be - and if they are the same "anxiety" awards mechanism should be used for landlords who are the victims of overholding, rent arrears etc.

 

[LarryScott]

Good we agree on that. The eviction rule was broken, from there you’re on a loser as a landlord, leaving yourself wide open. So really as a landlord myself I can’t justify the actions here. We have sprightly movers in their 80’s and short term executive rentals within 6 months of vacancy and one month of death.

I wonder if this ruling is better than the alternative.

Imagine if they said that he had to be allowed to move back in. In fact, isn't that supposed to be the consequence of not offering back?

Obviously, his current place is better, but he will have to pay the full amount going forward, so he may not have asked for it.