Rent supplement landlords failing to register with board

MORE THAN one-third of landlords receiving rent supplement from the Department of Social Protection have not legally registered their properties with the Private Residential Tenancies Board.

The board told an Oireachtas Environment Committee yesterday it had identified about 17,000 landlords since the start of the year who have failed to register with the board.

Some 95,900 households are in receipt of rent supplement payments from the department, but as the money usually goes directly to the tenant it has been difficult to use this method to identify whether landlords were compliant with their requirement to register with the board.

However, since January a landlord’s tax reference number must be supplied before any new rent supplement claims are awarded. From next April this condition will be extended to claims awarded before last January.

Records supplied to the board from the department for the first quarter of the year show 34 per cent of landlords were not registered, board director Anne Marie Caulfield said.

The board was sending warning letters to non-compliant landlords, and would move to prosecutions against those who failed to register but it wanted “to offer landlords the opportunity to mend their hand”, she said.

So far this year 32 per cent of disputes dealt with by the board related to rent arrears, while 38 per cent related to the failure of landlords to return deposits.

The board in 2009 commissioned research into the establishment of a deposit protection scheme, whereby deposits would be paid by tenants to a third party, possibly the board itself, and not to a landlord. However, it subsequently did not recommend a scheme be established, Ms Caulfield told the committee.

The programme for government last February contained a commitment to establish a deposit protection scheme, and the board would be seeking tenders in the coming weeks to conduct a cost-benefit analysis of such a scheme, she said.

Landlords and estate agents yesterday told the committee a deposit protection scheme should not be established, while student representatives said such a scheme was essential.

The Irish Property Owners’ Association said any scheme would be expensive and was unnecessary as “99.96 per cent of deposit refunds are dealt with in a prompt manner”.

The Institute of Professional Auctioneers and Valuers said the suggestion that all rental deposits be held by the board was a “disproportionate response” to the problem of deposit retention.

The Union of Students in Ireland said the establishment of the scheme was “common sense” and would be a preventative solution to the increasing problem of deposit retention by landlords.