Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I recognise the tight time as well so I will just focus on a couple of specific issues. The RTB gave us some statistics there around deposit retention, for example, rent arrears and the percentage of cases that deal with particular issues. If I heard the witnesses correctly on deposit retention, the RTB said that 92% of cases returned some element of the deposit. Do the witnesses have statistics on the success or otherwise of the various cases? In other words, if there are cases of rent arrears or cases of eviction on grounds of sale or termination on grounds of sale, to use the correct terminology, the statistics on same would be useful because earlier on we talked about not having accurate data on a lot of the issues.

I refer to the complexity of the regulations. When I was speaking on the Minister's Bill, I said that it might be better to just totally rewrite the whole Bill because it is quite complex for Members trying to deal with the amendments to amendments of Bills and so on. That is just a comment.

Maybe the RTB cannot comment on this but one of the matters that came up at the last session was a suggestion that it was very onerous to be a landlord in terms of the various costs involved. I do not know whether the RTB can answer that but it would be useful to know what the witnesses think because they started off by saying the RTB was impartial between the landlord and the tenant. Do the witnesses have any evidence or information on those claims that if any further impositions are put on landlords they will simply not be able to cope with the financial pressures? It would be interesting to get a perspective on that.