Two assumptions in there, and neither survives the report.
First, that they knew to show up. The report doesn't say when or how they were told. s.104 requires written notice of the hearing; the only record here is that the chair "confirmed with the case officer" that they were on notice. Compare TR0223-005989. The tenant didn't appear, the chair adjourned to ask how she'd been notified, and the answer was "by email only", which wasn't a lawful method of service at the time. The hearing was put back five weeks so she could be served by recorded post. That chair asked. This one took the case officer's word for it. In TR0001757 the RTB ran an adjudication without telling the landlords and never held the rehearing it promised; in TR0001325 it failed to notify the tenant of her own hearing. "They didn't turn up" is a reason to check the service of notice by the RTB, not a reason to automatically assume they couldn't be bothered. And it isn't a one-off. Add TR0001354, TR0001510 and TR0001281, where the notice arrived but the case files didn't and the hearing had to be adjourned on the day. (Let me know if you want more examples.). It doesn't stop at hearings either. In the Doonbeg rent review case from this month (TR0001627), the landlord, Councillor Rita McInerney, "first heard of RTB decision in the newspapers", according to the Clare Champion's headline of 15 October.
(Since we're on 005989: a landlord owed €48,797 lost both his notices because the warning letter said €50,259. The Tribunal did the sums itself. Nobody was in the room for the tenant either.)
Second, "the RTB should not be criticised for making a decision on the unchallenged evidence in front of them". I'd agree, if that's what it had done. The evidence in front of it was that the agent said the flat was near UCD. The finding was that the tenants were "told that she required the dwelling as she was due to commence studying in UCD". There was no evidence she was a student. Nobody said it. Not the agent, not the tenants, not the notice, not a document on the file. That sentence doesn't come from the evidence. It comes from the Tribunal. It then went to LinkedIn to disprove the thing it had written itself, and called the result an ulterior motive. That isn't deciding on unchallenged evidence. It's supplying the evidence and then deciding on it. An absent landlord is entitled to have the case against him stated as it was given, and the one thing an empty chair guarantees is that nobody is there to say "that's not what he said". That's the reason to be careful, not the excuse for not being.
And why shouldn't the RTB be criticised for finding something the Act doesn't ask it to find? s.56 asks whether the daughter moved in. It got the answer, and the €837.90 follows. Then it went on to find bad faith, on hearsay it had rewritten, against two people who weren't there, in a public report with their names on it. The Act didn't call for that. The tenants didn't ask for it. The Tribunal did it anyway. That is exactly what a tribunal should be criticised for.
https://rtb.ie/disputes/dispute-outcomes-and-orders/adjudication-and-tribunal-orders/?_search=TR0001645 https://rtb.ie/disputes/dispute-outcomes-and-orders/adjudication-and-tribunal-orders/?_search=TR0001757https://rtb.ie/disputes/dispute-outcomes-and-orders/adjudication-and-tribunal-orders/?_search=TR0001325https://rtb.ie/disputes/dispute-outcomes-and-orders/adjudication-and-tribunal-orders/?_search=TR0001354https://rtb.ie/disputes/dispute-outcomes-and-orders/adjudication-and-tribunal-orders/?_search=TR0001510https://rtb.ie/disputes/dispute-outcomes-and-orders/adjudication-and-tribunal-orders/?_search=TR0001281
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