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

stormy said:
Investors in funds can see what's going on too. IRES stock price is now below where it stood before the new rules were announced in June last year, sits about 40% below its 2020 peak, and trades at a >20% discount to NAV — a discount that has widened since the reforms, because the book value went up and the shares didn't. It is selling units at 25–30% over book. It continues to be worth more broken up than as a going concern, and the market knows it.
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That analysis is correct, but the Department of Housing and the RTB might not see that.

Do you remember the guy portraying a landlord on the RTB Facebook page last year? Dodgy, sleazy and not too bright. That's what they think the typical small landlord is, so I would not be surprised if they decided to get rid of us.

When you think about it, a €200 fine is a bit of a sting for the average person. A Fund wouldn't notice it. A €15k fine would be a disaster for the average person, not for a Fund. You also can't put a Fund in prison!
 
Apologies for resurrecting an old thread but I read this case earlier and it seems to be saying that the date of service is the date of posting?? I’m probably reading it wrong though, so one for posters with better knowledge and understanding than me.


On page 7:

“Accordingly, the Tribunal concludes that where a Notice of Termination is served by post in accordance with the Residential Tenancies Act 2004 (as amended), the relevant date of service is the date upon which the notice is posted, provided that all steps within the landlord's control necessary to effect service have been completed on that date.”
 
bipped said:
it seems to be saying that the date of service is the date of posting??
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Sharp spot, and thanks for flagging it @bipped . You're reading it right.

I was going to write this up on a new thread as yet another example of RTB inconsistency.

Here's the state of play. Since the Argutinski judgment, I'm aware of two notices (1481 and 1618) where the Tribunal followed the judgment and deemed the notices invalid. And there have been three notices (1333, 1530 and 1685) where the Tribunal read the same judgment and upheld theirs. Same Act, same High Court case, same facts in substance, opposite results. The only variable is which three people sat on the panel. It's really a farce.

The RTB could have ended this in March. It was the respondent in Argutinski. Instead of defending its own Tribunal and getting a reasoned ruling that bound everyone and would give certainty, it consented to the order and walked away. Its website then told landlords the High Court was right. Its Tribunals now tell them it was wrong.

Nobody at the RTB has reconciled the two, and nothing in the system requires them to.
So everyone is left in limbo. The rules changed on 14 September to give landlords 7 days to send the RTB its copy, so notices served since then are largely out of the firing line. But every notice posted before that date can still be struck down or upheld depending on which panel hears it. That includes rent reviews, where the same same-day rule applied, and we already know that rent reviews from years ago are being declared invalid with the landlord ordered to refund the difference. That's a dark cloud hanging over every landlord who ever used a stamp.

Even the new 7 days doesn't help everyone. A landlord living abroad who posts the notice and emails the RTB copy the same day has no idea when An Post will deliver it. If the letter takes more than a week, the copy went before the window even opened, and nobody can say whether a copy sent before service counts at all.

A Tribunal decision doesn't bind the next Tribunal, and the High Court outranks all of them. Guess wrong and it isn't just a lost case: acting on an invalid notice is an offence, and since 14 September it carries up to 12 months in prison.

This is the body that tells landlords they're "set up to succeed". Five panels, two answers, and the only certainty is the uncertainty.
 
The professionals have decided the public need to know.

Q: If you get trained as a journalist, how do they tell you to compose a headline for a situation where a landlord wants to sell, gives 227 days notice - way more than required, and the tenants are still there over a year later?

A: "One of Ireland's biggest landlords gives young family 56 days to leave Galway home"

The button at the RTB marked "generate random decision" was pressed and here's what the agents of chaos there came up with:

"The tenants challenged a notice of termination issued by the landlord dated October 6, 2025, which had set a termination date of May 21, 2026.​
​
Neasa Brennan of Threshold told a Residential Tenancies Board (RTB) tribunal that the notice had been received in the tenants’ post box on October 7, whereas it had been emailed to the RTB on October 6.​
​
Referring to a previous High Court ruling, Ms Brennan argued that the document had not been served on the same day as it was sent to the RTB, and an accompanying statutory declaration had omitted a passport issue date.​
​
On the issue of service, Ms Savage noted that the agent in Dublin had dispatched the notice via tracked post on October 6 and emailed the RTB on the same date, providing 227 days of notice – well in excess of the statutory requirement.​
​
Addressing the issue of the postal date, the tribunal determined that service is effected once all steps within the landlord’s control are completed upon posting. As the notice was posted to the tenants and emailed to the RTB on October 6, 2025, the statutory same-day requirement under Section 39A was satisfied."​
www.ireland-live.ie

One of Ireland's biggest landlords gives young family 56 days to leave Galway home

Xerico is a Cyprus-based subsidiary of Luxembourg fund, LRC RE-1, which owned more than 2,000 residential properties in Ireland in 2023
www.ireland-live.ie www.ireland-live.ie
​
 
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bipped said:
Apologies for resurrecting an old thread but I read this case earlier and it seems to be saying that the date of service is the date of posting?? I’m probably reading it wrong though, so one for posters with better knowledge and understanding than me.
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The landlord here is a large fund with over 2,000 properties, perhaps the Tribunal was afraid that this landlord could afford to take the RTB to the High Court if it lost and the whole sorry saga of landlords being instructed to follow the RTB's wrong interpretation would come out.

One another point this is exactly the type of landlord the new rules are supposed to be attracting, but they are all the way out as well. They want vacant possession to sell.
 
stormy said:
Here's the state of play. Since the Argutinski judgment, I'm aware of two notices (1481 and 1618) where the Tribunal followed the judgment and deemed the notices invalid. And there have been three notices (1333, 1530 and 1685) where the Tribunal read the same judgment and upheld theirs. Same Act, same High Court case, same facts in substance, opposite results. The only variable is which three people sat on the panel. It's really a farce.
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My goodness Stormy ! - thanks Bipped for finding the inconsistency, yet another one for Stormy to catalogue for us landlords. The RTB is so incompetent it’s beyond parody

stormy said:
A Tribunal decision doesn't bind the next Tribunal, and the High Court outranks all of them. Guess wrong and it isn't just a lost case: acting on an invalid notice is an offence, and since 14 September it carries up to 12 months in prison.
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Really why should I be surprised, I’ve my own 3 RTB determination orders, for three NofT. Two invalid, one valid. All NofT EXACTLY the same. Two invalid for different reasons.
 
Sarenco said:
It seems that at least some adjudicators agree with me but the lack of consistency is certainly frustrating to put it mildly.
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The judge gave a non-binding option, so they have discretion about what to do. The case in question didn't depend on it, since the NoT was invalid for many other reasons.
 
@LarryScott, I'd push back on "non-binding".

Is it clear the service point isn't a ground? It read as one to me, and the three Tribunals that refused to follow it said it was obiter without engaging with the paragraphs below:

stormy said:
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.
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A judge who lists three errors of law and quashes on all three has decided all three. "Not alone" is not "not at all". And if it is a ground, the discretion disappears: a Tribunal is bound by a High Court finding of error of law, whether the RTB chose to argue the case or consented to it. The consent goes to how the order was obtained, not to what the judgment holds.

Happy to be shown where I've misread it.
 
To be fair, I don’t think Section 64 RTA was brought to the Court’s attention in Argutinski.
 
It is crazy. You follow the RTB guidance, but win or lose depending on how your particular Tribunal is constituted. It's equivalent to flipping a coin. How likely you are to appeal to the High Court could well be a consideration as well. That is not how the law is supposed to operate.
 
Sarenco said:
To be fair, I don't think Section 64 RTA was brought to the Court's attention in Argutinski.
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Probably right. But if the judgment is grounded on the service point, and on my reading it is, the Tribunals are bound to follow it until it is challenged again. A Tribunal can't treat a High Court judgment as per incuriam; that's for a court above it, or for the RTB to argue in the next case. If s.64 was missed, the RTB was the party best placed to raise it, and it chose to consent instead.

It made this mess by not defending its own case, and accommodation providers bear the brunt.
 
stormy said:
@LarryScott, I'd push back on "non-binding".
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Stormy said:
What he said at para 10 was that he preferred not to rest the decision on those points alone
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It could be interpreted either way really. My interpretation was he was saying that he wasn't sure that point alone was enough. He wasn't saying if it was or if it wasn't. Thus, it isn't clear.

I would interpret it as saying that service is ideally considered the date the tenant received the notice, but that he wasn't willing to state that using the postal date would invalidate the NoT on its own.

Essentially, he was saying that since he didn't need to rule on a minor issue since the NoT had other major issues.

You are right though that in the conclusion he says

Judgement said:
.... it disregarded the unchallenged evidence that the notice of termination had only been received on 23 January ...
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That does refer to the date of the notice was served to the RTB/Tenant in his conclusions.

He said the date of service is either
- the date on which it would ordinarily be received in the post
- the actual date it was received, but only if there is some evidence to establish that date

So, I guess it is unclear if it was binding.

Having said that the comment by the Judge that the service date assumption by the RTB was wrong would be "persuasive". So, tribunals could follow it.

I wonder if they decided to only follow it going forward if there would be much risk of a legal challenge.
 
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