I tried to make this point on the PIA thread and it was moved on as off-topic, fairly enough — it's a separate subject. But the two are worth setting side by side, because both are about the same thing: a person who owes money, stays in the home, and has a repayment plan imposed on the creditor.
The PIA
Case here: a homeowner with 50% equity gets 0.5% fixed for 18 years. Whatever you think of the outcome, look at what it took. A Personal Insolvency Practitioner. A prescribed financial statement covering income, expenditure, assets and liabilities. A creditor vote. Court approval. A right of objection. And at the end, the bank is paid interest — low, but not nothing.
The RTB
Now the tenant equivalent. Some real determination orders:
The comparison
The District Court cannot make an instalment order without a statement of means and an examination on oath, with the creditor entitled to be heard. The RTB's determinations are enforced through that same court — and it imposes the schedule with none of that.
So the PIA at 0.5% is indefensible, as Brendan says. But a PIA is a formal insolvency process with a professional, a court and a vote. The RTB does the same thing to a landlord in a sentence, for nothing, and nobody has to justify it to anyone.
Sitting residents in both cases. In one, the creditor was a party to the process — heard, voting, compensated with interest. In the other, nobody asked the landlord anything: not what he could afford to wait for, not whether he had a mortgage on the property, not what fourteen months without rent had already cost him. His circumstances don't appear in the determination at all. The tenant's do, in two sentences, and that was enough to write him out of his own money for seven years (TR0001417, Roscam case).
And there's a difference in what the creditor can do about it afterwards. Brendan's point on the PIA thread is right — the bank recovers that 0.5% by charging everyone else more. A blended loss across the book, priced into the spread. That's why we pay the highest mortgage rates in the eurozone, and it's at least a mechanism.
A landlord has no spread. He can't charge his other tenants more to cover this one — the rent on every sitting tenancy is capped at 2% or inflation, and a new tenancy after a no-fault termination can't be reset at all. The loss isn't pooled. It sits on one person, on one property, for as long as the order runs.
So the bank gets 0.5% and passes the rest on. The landlord gets 0% and absorbs it.
The PIA
Case here: a homeowner with 50% equity gets 0.5% fixed for 18 years. Whatever you think of the outcome, look at what it took. A Personal Insolvency Practitioner. A prescribed financial statement covering income, expenditure, assets and liabilities. A creditor vote. Court approval. A right of objection. And at the end, the bank is paid interest — low, but not nothing.
The RTB
Now the tenant equivalent. Some real determination orders:
- DR0919-57065 — arrears of €2,516, ordered repaid at €3 a week in 838 instalments. Sixteen years, running to 2036, on a rent of €32 a week.
- TR0001417 (Galway, this year) — €16,000 from a tenant who paid rent once in eleven months. €200 a month for eighty months, to January 2033. Over 6.5 years. The tenant hadn't asked for instalments. The Tribunal built the schedule itself from a passing remark about maternity benefit.
- TR0120-004160 (Bray) — €17,552 at €50 a week, 351 instalments, nearly seven years. The Determination Order says "per day" where the Tribunal report says "per week", so the enforceable document and the reasoned one differ by a factor of seven on when the money is due.
- TR0001257 — €50,400 at €1,000 a month, over four years, with the tenants still in occupation and rent accruing faster than the instalment.
- DR0623-86659 (Dublin 2, 2023) — €7,232 in 206 instalments of €35. Clause 3 says "per calendar month" and "each week" in the same sentence; clauses 5 and 6 say weekly. Read one way it's four years; read the other, its 17 years. The order doesn't say which — and it's the document the District Court would be asked to enforce.
The comparison
| PIA | RTB instalment order | |
| Financial statement from debtor | Required, prescribed form | None |
| Creditor consulted | Vote | Not asked |
| Independent scrutiny | PIP + court | A paragraph in the determination |
| Interest | ||
| Reasons given | Yes | No |
| Term | 18 years | Up to 17 years |
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[/td]The District Court cannot make an instalment order without a statement of means and an examination on oath, with the creditor entitled to be heard. The RTB's determinations are enforced through that same court — and it imposes the schedule with none of that.
So the PIA at 0.5% is indefensible, as Brendan says. But a PIA is a formal insolvency process with a professional, a court and a vote. The RTB does the same thing to a landlord in a sentence, for nothing, and nobody has to justify it to anyone.
Sitting residents in both cases. In one, the creditor was a party to the process — heard, voting, compensated with interest. In the other, nobody asked the landlord anything: not what he could afford to wait for, not whether he had a mortgage on the property, not what fourteen months without rent had already cost him. His circumstances don't appear in the determination at all. The tenant's do, in two sentences, and that was enough to write him out of his own money for seven years (TR0001417, Roscam case).
And there's a difference in what the creditor can do about it afterwards. Brendan's point on the PIA thread is right — the bank recovers that 0.5% by charging everyone else more. A blended loss across the book, priced into the spread. That's why we pay the highest mortgage rates in the eurozone, and it's at least a mechanism.
A landlord has no spread. He can't charge his other tenants more to cover this one — the rent on every sitting tenancy is capped at 2% or inflation, and a new tenancy after a no-fault termination can't be reset at all. The loss isn't pooled. It sits on one person, on one property, for as long as the order runs.
So the bank gets 0.5% and passes the rest on. The landlord gets 0% and absorbs it.