RTB told landlords posting date = service date. The High Court says it doesn't. Accommodation providers set up to fail?

[stormy]

More notices struck down, and again because the RTB told landlords the wrong thing.

TR0001481 — heard May 2026, published this month. Two notices, both posted with the RTB copy emailed on the day of posting. Both invalid on Argutinski.

The first, served March 2025, was a no-grounds termination relying on the right to end the tenancy before the Further Part 4 re-commenced.

The second, served September 2025, was a 28-day arrears notice, preceded by a warning notice in August citing €3,137 unpaid, which went unremedied.

Slip rule not allowed
The Tribunal held s.64A cannot reach this defect — nothing on the face of the notice is wrong, the fault is external to the document, in the timing of service.

Remedial notice allowed in some situations
But the tribunal held s.66(2A) can be applied, and it found itself obliged to permit a remedial notice. However, that remedial notice route is only available to one of the two notices, the arrears notice.

The no-grounds notice gave 227 days and was, on the Tribunal's own finding, compliant with the Act in every other respect. A remedial notice was refused, as the tenancy had since passed into the Further Part 4 tenancy of unlimited duration. As a result, that route to possession is gone permanently: any remedial notice would issue after the Further Part 4 had commenced. This landlord was otherwise compliant, followed RTB guidance and still lost the notice outright.

That is the trap. What saved the second notice was a breach that had already crystallised and could not lapse. Where the ground depends on a closing statutory window, Argutinski can run the clock out during the dispute, and the remedial notice has nothing left to work on.

Either way, it's not much use.
And note what "the cure" actually gets the landlord for the arrears notice. The remedial notice is a fresh notice of termination, and the tenant can dispute it like any other — referral, mediation / adjudication, appeal, a new three-member Tribunal, another stenographer, another round of professional costs. This landlord served his first notice in March 2025. He reached a determination in September 2026 that gives him no possession, and now starts the process again with a notice that can itself be challenged. Three years is now a realistic estimate before he holds a determination order worth anything. And that's before enforcement even begins.


The slip rule was supposed to save this

Please don't panic! If there's a problem with service of a document but there's no dispute it was sent, the RTB may be able to apply the "slip rule". It doesn't mean a document is invalid.

The important thing is there is no ambiguity about the date the notice was sent / posted / emailed or left with the tenant and the RTB. It's important to be clear and accurate about the date something was done.

However, I would be surprised if the RTB didn’t apply the slip rule if notices were served in accordance with their original guidance. You are obviously free to take a different view.

It didn't. The slip rule was argued and refused. The only cure was s.66(2A), and only for the arrears notice.

The Tribunal accepted this landlord had probably done exactly what the RTB's published guidance told him to do. It called Argutinski a lacuna in the legislation, acknowledged the difficulty it has caused, and struck his notice down anyway.

Understand what that means. Acting on an invalid notice is a summary offence carrying fines and up to six months' imprisonment — prosecuted by the RTB itself. The same body writes the guidance, runs the adjudication and tribunal, and is acquiring powers to sanction non-compliance. Landlords follow that guidance because the alternative is penalty. It produced void notices — and its own Tribunal now says so while enforcing the consequences.

 

[Sarenco]

That’s a ridiculous decision.

The Tribunal declined to apply Section 64A because there is nothing of the face of the notices of termination that is erroneous, incomplete or in need of correction.

But Section 64A is not limited to errors on the face of a notice. The section can be applied to “a slip or omission which is contained in, or occurred during the service of, the notice of termination...”

I hope the decision was appealed.

 

[Greenbook]

That’s a ridiculous decision.

Yes it is. But it is typical of the RTB which always looks to the form and not the substance of what has happened.

These are incredible decisions. Landlords had no choice but to follow the incorrect instructions on the RTB website. Any landlord who'd gone before the RTB Tribunal and referred to the Interpretation Act would have been kicked out with a lost case.

Even worse, all evictions between 2022 when the same day rule came in and when the RTB corrected their guidance are now invalid and illegal. It would not surprise me if Threshold or CATU or one of the myriad of government funded anti-landlord bodies get in on the act and start helping tenants to take cases for compensation for being illegally evicted.

And this is just one of the many traps, restrictions and problems that the average small landlord is facing.

 

[stormy]

One more thing I had missed on 1481. The Tribunal grounded the same-day rule in s.62(1A). That subsection was only inserted this year by the 2026 Act. The notices were served in March and September 2025, when the rule sat in s.39A(1), with s.35(11) supplying invalidity. Three weeks later, in TR0001618, the same chairperson wrote that "at the material time this requirement was governed by Section 39A(1)". So a determination striking down two notices rests on a provision that did not exist when they were served — and its own author corrected himself in his next report.

But Section 64A is not limited to errors on the face of a notice. The section can be applied to “a slip or omission which is contained in, or occurred during the service of, the notice of termination...”

Agreed, and it's worse than that. s.66(2A)(a)(i) uses the same formula — a defect "contained in, or occurring during the service of, the original notice" — and the Tribunal held that limb satisfied because "the defect arose during the service of the notice." Same words, read out of s.64A and into s.66(2A), a couple of pages apart.

I hope the decision was appealed.

It would need to be appealed within 21 days of the issue of the Determination Order. The order issued in July, so the window closed in August. Nothing relevant shows on the Courts Service High Court case search under Orkstake, and I doubt anyone lodged.

Consider the arithmetic. A s.123 appeal means solicitor and counsel, a hearing twelve to eighteen months out, and realistically €20k–€40k of your own costs. Win, and you partially recover costs on adjudication — if the court awards costs at all, which on a novel point of public importance it may not. Lose, and you pay the RTB's costs on top. All to win back a notice you can re-serve for nothing under s.66(2A) within 28 days. You'd need more money than sense. And the tenant didn't even attend.

This is how the system protects itself. The only route for correcting a Tribunal's error of law is one no rational landlord takes. So the errors stand. They sit on the register as if they were right, the next panel reads them as guidance, and the body that made them is never asked to explain itself. The RTB isn't accountable because the mechanism for holding it to account is priced out of use.

 

[polecon]

If this isn't it, what would a Hostile Environment look like?

 

[Greenbook]

If this isn't it, what would a Hostile Environment look like?

Indeed, and instead of doing something to solve this problem in the latest Residential Tenancies Act, like saying all pre-Argutinski NoTs that followed the RTB rules at the time are fine, they instead went off and added a new bunch of paperwork crimes to penalise landlords.

 

[bipped]

If this isn't it, what would a Hostile Environment look like?

The land acts from 1870. The various acts over years went from fixing rents, no evictions etc to tenant purchase with repayments over 68 years. Tenant loans from the state. Eventually in 1909, it was compulsory landlord sales. In 1870 just 3% of farmers were owners, by 1920 it was 97%. Total compulsory purchase came later and the Land Commission had powers to seize and redistribute. Crazy changes. The slow drip - tenants wanted no landlords and that was achieved over many years.

 

[bipped]

Indeed, and instead of doing something to solve this problem in the latest Residential Tenancies Act, like saying all pre-Argutinski NoTs that followed the RTB rules at the time are fine, they instead went off and added a new bunch of paperwork crimes to penalise landlords.

I wonder did any NoT fail before the HC case if a landlord had posted the notice to the tenant on X date but didn’t send it to the RTB until the following day. That would not have complied with the RTB advice on their website which their adjudicators seem to rely on.

 

[stormy]

The land acts from 1870. The various acts over years went from fixing rents, no evictions etc to tenant purchase with repayments over 68 years. Tenant loans from the state. Eventually in 1909, it was compulsory landlord sales. In 1870 just 3% of farmers were owners, by 1920 it was 97%. Total compulsory purchase came later and the Land Commission had powers to seize and redistribute.

Good parallel.

One difference though. The Land Acts ended with the landlord being paid — state-financed purchase, capital out, an exit at a price. What we have now is the restriction without the purchase. Rents capped, grounds narrowed, procedure weaponised, and nobody buying you out.

If anything, that was the more honest version. It named the destination and funded it.

 

[stormy]

I wonder did any NoT fail before the HC case if a landlord had posted the notice to the tenant on X date but didn’t send it to the RTB until the following day.

That's a very very good question!

 

[Greenbook]

I wonder did any NoT fail before the HC case if a landlord had posted the notice to the tenant on X date but didn’t send it to the RTB until the following day. That would not have complied with the RTB advice on their website which their adjudicators seem to rely on.

I don't doubt that the landlord would have lost and had his case kicked out of the Tribunal.

And that would have have happened even if he showed them the relevant section of the Interpretation Act.

 

[Greenbook]

Nothing from the IPOA about these decisions.

They don't seem to be highlighting the problem or complaining about it.

Their latest Facebook post is an invitation to an RTB webinar!

 

[Sarenco]

One point that’s been bugging me is the statutory requirement to include the date of service in a notice of termination. I mean how can you know with any certainty when a notice sent by post will be received by its addressee?

So, I went back and looked at the legislation.

Section 64 of the principal act provides, for the avoidance of doubt, the specification in a notice of termination of a date of service does not comply with the relevant requirements if any relevant step in the service of that notice remains untaken on that date.

A relevant step in the service of a notice remains untaken for these purposes if any of the steps that are within the power or control of the landlord or tenant or agent (as appropriate) to take for the purpose of effecting such service remains untaken.

So, it seems to me that posting a notice would be the final relevant step “within the power or control” of a landlord and therefore the date of posting would be the correct date to insert on the face of the notice as the date of service.

So maybe the RTB was right all along!

 

[Greenbook]

So maybe the RTB was right all along!

Very possibly you are correct, in which case the RTB should have appealed the High Court decision to the Court of Appeal.

They didn't so the High Court decision stands and landlords bear the brunt of the mess through no fault of their own.

 

[Sarenco]

Well, the judge in Argutinski didn’t ground his decision on the date of service issue so I’m not sure what’s to appeal.

But the RTB should certainly have sought comprehensive legal advice on how to proceed and shared that advice with adjudicators.

 

[JamieB_]

Could you post a notice to the tenant and the RTB every day for 2 weeks. Surely you would find 2 that would land on the same day. Crazy that the system is so bad that you even have top consider such stupidity. There is no reason at all, bar trying to make notices invalid, that common sense shouldnt prevail when looking at the intent of the landlord to issue notice. You shouldnt have to time things to the hour or write specific text etc. It should be as simple as. "I am terminating the lease on this date according to the following rules. Then list the rules and dates etc". Everyone knows what is meant no matter what the text or dates of postage.

 

[LarryScott]

Could you post a notice to the tenant and the RTB every day for 2 weeks.

I suggested that at the time this was discussed near the start of the year.

I wonder what the rules are for new NoTs. Do they cancel pending ones. If you send an NoT for vacating on a particular date, and then send another NoT for vacating 1 month later, does the 2nd NoT cancel the first?

If so, you could get a situation where they rule that the NoT sent on Friday cancels the valid NoT sent on the previous Monday, even though the Friday one was invalid due to the two service dates being different.

I wonder if it would work if all of them have the same date required for vacation.

 

[Wavelly]

The RTB has now updated their website with the new guidance that they must receive a copy of an NoT within 7 days of it being served on the tenant. I wonder if this only applies from today or if they will backdate rule? It doesn’t state it’s from a specific date.

 

[Greenbook]

The RTB has now updated their website with the new guidance that they must receive a copy of an NoT within 7 days of it being served on the tenant. I wonder if this only applies from today or if they will backdate rule? It doesn’t state it’s from a specific date.

It's all a bit 1984. The website instructions change out of the blue with no reference to the previous instructions or why there is a change.

Well, the judge in Argutinski didn’t ground his decision on the date of service issue so I’m not sure what’s to appeal.

Not a lawyer, but I assume that because of the importance of the issue (all NoTs issued since 2022 now invalid even though landlords were following RTB instructions which they were told they must follow), they could have appealed the High Court ruling on that ground alone. If they used your interpretation, they could ask the Court of Appeal whether it was correct or not.

Which ever way you look at it, it astonishing that there is no direct guidance on the RTB website about this extremely important issue. Nothing from the IPOA either.

Hopefully we get a Fund or an AHB caught by the decision in a Tribunal. They'll have the money to appeal to the High Court.

 

[stormy]

Well, the judge in Argutinski didn't ground his decision on the date of service issue so I'm not sure what's to appeal.

The service point is one of the three errors of law Simons J lists in his conclusion (para 17): the Tribunal "failed to direct its mind to the critical provisions of Section 25 of the Interpretation Act 2005" and "disregarded the unchallenged evidence" that the notice was received on 23 January. Para 7 states in terms that the Tribunal erred in law in treating the posting date as the date of service. What he said at para 10 was that he preferred not to rest the decision on those points alone — and then rested it on them together with the signatory point. That's a ground, not an aside.

He also treated the mismatch between the date on the notice (21 January, posting) and actual receipt (23 January) as a defect in itself (para 9), which is directly against the s.64 reading.

Where you do have a point: s.64 wasn't argued. The appellant was a litigant in person and the RTB withdrew during the course of the appeal (para 19).

The RTB then rewrote its guidance to say receipt, and the seven-day window starts today. If it thought the posting date was the date of service, it would have said so.

The RTB has now updated their website with the new guidance that they must receive a copy of an NoT within 7 days of it being served on the tenant. I wonder if this only applies from today or if they will backdate rule? It doesn't state it's from a specific date.

It's not just website guidance, it's statute, and the timeline matters.

The same-day rule isn't new. It came in as s.39A — inserted by the 2020 Act for arrears notices, extended to every notice of termination by the 2022 Act from July 2022 — with s.35(11) making a breach fatal, and that's the provision every notice served up to February this year was judged under. The Residential Tenancies (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2026 (No. 3) simply moved it: from 28 February 2026 it became s.62(1A), same rule, with the invalidity written into the subsection itself. Twelve days later, on 12 March, Simons J delivered Argutinski, and the posting-date reading the RTB had been giving landlords collapsed.

So the Oireachtas had just re-enacted, in a new home, a same-day rule that on the High Court's reading couldn't be complied with by post at all. The fix went into the second Bill, drafted and passed between March and June, enacted as the Housing and Residential Tenancies (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2026 (No. 33), and commenced by Minister Browne's order today, 14 September — replacing "the same day" with a seven-day window.

On your question: it runs from today. The amendment is prospective — a notice is judged under the rule in force when it was served. Anything posted between February and last week is same-day under s.62(1A); before that, same-day under s.39A. Nothing is backdated. The landlords caught by Argutinski stay caught.

Two Acts in one year on the same rule, the second cleaning up the first, and the RTB's website simply swapping the instruction without a word about why.

This should be a scandal
Step back and look at what this adds up to. A statutory body published guidance that produced void notices. It kept that guidance up for four years. When the High Court exposed it, the RTB withdrew rather than defend its own reading, then changed the website without a word — no notice, no acknowledgement, no advice to the landlords who had relied on it and now hold invalid notices they may be prosecuted for acting on. Its own Tribunal (TR0001481) has recorded, in a published determination, that the landlord probably followed the RTB's guidance, and struck him down regardless. And the body that prosecutes the resulting offence is the body that caused it.

If a Revenue guidance note had led thousands of taxpayers into penalties, and Revenue had quietly rewritten the page and carried on issuing the penalties, it would be a front-page story and a Dáil question. This is the same failure with a different regulator, and the silence — from the RTB, from the Department, from the IPOA — is part of the scandal.