Resolution of disputes taking ‘unacceptably long’, interim RTB chief says

The length of time it takes to settle disputes between landlords and tenants before the Residential Tenancies Board (RTB) is unacceptably long, its interim director has said.

Current average processing times for disputes before the RTB stand at 9.3 weeks for mediation; 22 weeks for an adjudication; and 29 weeks for a hearing in front of a tribunal.

Former Dublin City Council chief executive Owen Keegan, now interim director of the RTB, said the board hoped to get to a position by the first quarter of next year where disputes were processed within 16 weeks.

However, he told the Oireachtas Committee on Housing that the target was dependent on resources being available to tackle the rate of increase in cases coming before the board. A total of 7,417 disputes between landlords and tenants were referred to the RTB in 2022, rising to 9,908 last year.

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Mr Keegan said the RTB had redesigned its online registration system in 2021 but that issues arose with “system performance which caused serious difficulty for landlords seeking to register their tenancies” in 2022.

“Over the last two years we have worked hard to stabilise the system and we have successfully introduced changes to improve the customer experience and our data quality,” he said.

Mr Keegan said the board of the RTB had agreed in May to spend €1.5 million on a new computer system which would be capable of handling large databases and would “throw up cases that we need to investigate”.

RTB deputy director Lucia Crimin told the committee the computer system would have the power to compare large data sets, such as individual Eircodes and the Residential Tenancies Register, and flag properties where rents increased by more than the permitted maximum of 2 per cent a year.

The system will also have the power to track rent increases relating to individual properties by Eircode and flag properties where tenancies existed but are not renewed on an annual basis.

Subject to new permissions on data sharing with the Revenue, the computer system would also be able to identify where a landlord is returning details of an income for a property and where that property is not registered with the RTB.

She said the system was about identifying cases of interest and ensuring compliance as investigating every tenancy manually was not a good use of resources.

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