RTB no teeth ?

[TomEdison]

Had the landlords required it for their daughter for college, surely they would have issued the NoT in March to guarantee vacant possession in September.

To do that, they would have needed to know in March that their daughter would be going to UCD in September. But that's not how the CAO offers work.

In 2025 the CAO offers came out on 27 August. The NoT was served a week later., on 3 September That stacks up.

. . . expecting to occupy property from Feb 26, offspring sells / hands in notice / books removal van / flights / whatever with that date in mind.

No, I don't think so. NoT was served on 3 September; termination happened on 15 September, so discussions about early termination must have begun pretty much immediately the notice was served. So I think termination on 15 September could easily have been agreed before anyone had entered into any irrevocable commitments in the belief that it wasn't going to happen until 4 February.

 

[Greenbook]

To do that, they would have needed to know in March that their daughter would be going to UCD in September. But that's not how the CAO offers work.

The way the CAO works is that you have about 10 preferences, so if you don't get your first, you get your second and so on. So there is generally a very good chance that you will get some course in the University of your choice or, indeed, another college in Dublin.

In any event, why enter into the mad Dublin student rental market and try to get a place from September to February. That would cost you in or around 6k in rent and if you are in a student complex you may have to pay for the second semester upfront and you may not get a refund if you leave early (this is illegal but still happens). The better option is to issue the NoT for vacant possession in September and if the daughter didn't get a place in UCD, the apartment is offered back to the tenants. They have no entitlement to compensation if that happens.

From having daughters in college in UCC and it being common enough for the wealthy farming people of North Cork and Tipperary to buy places in Cork for their children when they start college, September would be the child's move in date. The parent's view, and this would have been mine had I been in that position, is that the child will get something in UCC or failing that MTU.

So the assumption by the tenants and Tribunal that an NoT issued in September was wanted for the daughter to go to college is odd. The tenants moved out very quickly, but that would be unusual these days. Most tenants need the full notice period or longer to find new accommodation.

Overall though, this may well be what it looks like on the surface, a fight over the dog followed by a bogus NoT. There is a daughter but she was never moving in for college or otherwise. Without the transcript and the landlords' side of the story, you can't be 100% sure what happened.

 

[stormy]

Termination date first, since it's been asked three ways. The notice was served on 3 September 2025 and the termination date was 4 February 2026. About five months, not six.

Simply leaving your property does not terminate the tenancy, and you remain liable for rent, etc, until the tenancy is terminated.

Not on foot of a landlord's notice. s.62(1)(f)(ii) defines the termination date as the day "on or before which... the tenant must vacate possession". The Act builds early departure into the notice itself, so there's no tenant counter-notice, no two-week problem (Bronte), and nothing to agree. The tenants went on 15 September, the landlords took the keys and returned the deposit, and that was that. Landlord agreement not required as per the Act.

does the 12 months offer-back period start on the final date of the termination notice or in this case would it be 12 months from when the tenant moved out?

From the termination date. Paragraph 4(b)(i) of the Table to s.34 runs the 12 months "from expiry of the period of notice required to be given by the notice", so here 4 February 2026 to 4 February 2027. But that's the offer-back for a family member who moves in and leaves again. A family member who never moves in is the other case, s.56(1)(c)(ii), and that's the one this Tribunal decided.

On the CAO argument: it's about an inference. The Tribunal's own record of the evidence never records anyone saying "college". It records "proximity to UCD" and "the week after CAO offers". The reasons then say the tenants were "told that she required the dwelling as she was due to commence studying in UCD". Whether that inference is a good one is what we're all debating. The Tribunal didn't debate it; it wrote it down as something the tenants were told.

Which brings it back to DannyBoyD's point, and he's right. February was the date that mattered. The investigator's two months before it prove nothing about a daughter planning a February move, and the Tribunal said so: "some question" about occupation after February. What filled that gap was the landlords' absence, and on occupation that's legitimate. On motive it isn't. s.56 asks one question, did she move in, and the Tribunal had its answer. It then found "ulterior motivation" on the back of the same absence, with no statutory test to stop it. A daughter who stayed abroad, a job that fell through, a landlord who missed the letter: all of them get the same finding of bad faith on this reasoning, because the Act never asked the Tribunal to make it.

 

[Bronte]

Just curious but does the 12 months offer-back period start on the final date of the termination notice or in this case would it be 12 months from when the tenant moved out?

No idea. It’s exhausting keeping up with the rules. You also have to figure which rules applied at the time …. I have ZERO intention of this kind of stuff, when I got my tenants out I knew the rules as it pertained then, but I was selling, the one I didn’t sell was empty 2 years.

 

[DannyBoyD]

termination on 15 September could easily have been agreed before anyone had entered into any irrevocable commitments

On the contrary - discussions between parent & offspring would have happened well before NoT.

Certainly would have done for me - I'd have been very clear to offspring to expect the NoT process to take a long time.

 

[stormy]

Can I pull this back to the point, because the thread has drifted into whether the daughter was a student, when the notice was served and who agreed what with whom. None of that is my gripe with this finding.

A Tribunal is a creature of statute. It has the powers the Act gives it and no others. On a s.56 complaint the Act gives it one question: did the person named in the notice move in within a reasonable time? Yes or no. If no, damages or a direction to restore possession, s.56(3). That's the whole jurisdiction. The Act puts motive somewhere else entirely, in a dispute over the notice's validity, and s.56(6)(b) says so in terms.

This Tribunal answered the question it was given. She didn't move in. €837.90. Done. I've no quarrel with any of that.

Then it made a second finding, and this is the one I object to. It said it "must find... that there was an ulterior motivation". No section asked it to. No party asked it to; the tenants wanted an acknowledgment and their costs. It changed nothing in the order. And it was built on hearsay from LinkedIn and a version of the agent's words that appears nowhere in the Tribunal's own record of the evidence. That finding now sits on a public register against two named people who weren't in the room, and it will never be appealed because the appeal costs more than the award.

That's my major gripe, and it's the only one. Not whether the landlords were right or wrong. Whether a statutory body can make a finding of bad faith the statute never gave it power to make, and publish it. Everything else on the last two pages is a sideshow.

 

[Brendan Burgess]

The decision was made by a tribunal of people and not by Dr. Spock.

They looked at the whole situation. Why did they give notice? They had an ulterior motive to get the tenants out. It's a perfectly reasonable finding to make.

Brendan

 

[stormy]

They looked at the whole situation. Why did they give notice? They had an ulterior motive to get the tenants out. It's a perfectly reasonable finding to make.

Reasonable isn't the test. Jurisdiction is. s.56 asks one question: did she move in. "Why did they give notice" belongs in a validity dispute, s.56(6)(b), where the landlord swears to his reasons and gets cross-examined on them. The tenants didn't bring one. The Tribunal decided it anyway.
And "the whole situation" was half of one. One side present, the other side's motives supplied by a tenant reading LinkedIn, and the agent's words rewritten in the reasons into something the Tribunal's own evidence section doesn't contain.

A landlord who published a finding that his tenant acted in bad faith, on that evidence, with the tenant absent, would be in front of the RTB inside a month. When the RTB does it to a landlord, it's "perfectly reasonable".

Spock would have stuck to the question.

 

[stormy]

Brendan, let me narrow this, because I think we've been arguing past each other.
I accept the hearsay was admissible. I accept the landlords should have turned up. I accept the finding that the daughter didn't move in, and the €837.90 with it. None of that is in dispute.

One question. Suppose it had gone the other way: the tenant misses the hearing, and the Tribunal, having decided the deposit question it was asked, adds a finding that the tenant only brought the complaint out of spite, based on what the landlord says the tenant's friends posted online. Then publishes it with her name on it. Perfectly reasonable?

If no, then we agree on the principle, and the only thing left is whether it applies to landlords too. If yes, then say so, and we know where the disagreement is.

The Tribunal didn't need to find motive, and the Act gave it no power to. Its question was whether the daughter moved in. That's the whole of it. So the sentence I'm asking you to agree with is this: a tribunal should decide the question the Act gives it, and stop.

 

[Greenbook]

Here is the other side of what can happen from a landlord's perspective. Evicting for his daughter's use, tenant to move out in October 2024, tenant still in place. Landlord won before the first Tribunal. Tenant appealed to the second Tribunal on the basis that he doesn't believe the daughter is really moving in. The landlord here really looks genuine and is still without the property after 2 years. At least the rent is being paid.

Tribunal due early December for overholding property since October 2024. Rent being paid. Tenants only piece of submitted evidence to the rtb is a statement from tenant stating they believe I do not want the property for my daughter to occupy. The rtb adjudication ruled late spring 2026 in my favour that my paperwork was legally correct and that the tenant should leave within 21 days. They appealed and that statement is the only piece of evidence submitted on their behalf for the tribunal. Not once did the tenant raise this issue with me and in fact, I did txt the tenant in mid September 2024 about getting my daughter’s furniture dropped off at the house. Will the tribunal panel request proof of my daughter’s employment / college in Dublin, which we can provide or is it just a case of my paperwork being correct for a family member occupation which was ruled correct at the adjudication hearing in spring 2026. Also, tenant painted the natural wooden kitchen cabinets without permission and did a terrible job without a primer etc. Should I get a quote from a painter as we are now committed to maintaining these painted cabinets going forward.

 

[Brendan Burgess]

If you are trying to find out if the termination of the lease is genuine or not, it's reasonable to look at the motive or the reason given.

 

[stormy]

If you are trying to find out if the termination of the lease is genuine or not, it's reasonable to look at the motive or the reason given.

Agreed, and nobody was trying to find that out. That's a validity dispute, the one the Act sends motive to (s.56(6)(b)), and the tenants didn't bring it. They'd have had to, within 28 days, while still in the flat. They brought a s.56 complaint instead, which asks whether she moved in, and the Tribunal's own statement of the issue says exactly that: whether the tenants "have been unjustly deprived of possession". Not whether the notice was genuine.

So let's be clear about what you're defending. A Tribunal with jurisdiction to decide one thing, whether the daughter moved in, decided a second thing, that two named people acted with "ulterior motivation", in a dispute that didn't ask it, on evidence from LinkedIn, against parties who weren't there, and published it. You're saying that's perfectly fine.

I've read hundreds of these reports. A finding of bad motive that the decision didn't need, against a party who wasn't there: I've found exactly one, and it's this case. Not against a tenant, and not against any other landlord either. If anyone can find a second, on either side, I'd like to see it. If nobody can, then this isn't the RTB "looking at the whole situation" as a matter of course. It's a Tribunal doing something no other Tribunal has done, once, to a landlord, and I'd expect this forum, of all places, to call that out rather than call it reasonable.