Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The tier 1 companies are the small guys who may have ten tenancies. They have an obligation to register tenancies with the RTB which requires paperwork for each tenant and is a burden for the volunteers who, in many cases, run these bodies. It will take a few hours for this to be done for ten tenants but moving to annual registration does not meant they have to do all the work which they do in the first year again. We are building a new piece of technology with the RTB for everything it does and we have stressed that we have to facilitate easy annual registration for everyone, particular for AHBs which often do not have a dedicated person to do this and which do not make the profits which a private landlord would make.

We have spoken about the need for the register to be consistent and complete. As the Deputy knows, when one starts to interfere with different datasets and to have different application periods or time periods, it can skew information and not give an accurate picture. A tenant might come in in the first year and be there for ten years but, as Deputy Ó Broin said, the terms of a tenancy could change within that period and it is important for the RTB to have an idea of what is happening in this very important part of the rental market. AHBs have to use the dispute mechanisms of the RTB when they have problems with tenants and an independent arbiter has to decide on the matter, and tenants also use the RTB for this purpose. There needs to be a fee because the RTB needs to be funded in that way as well as through central Government, recognising the burden on the board of disputes between AHBs and their tenants.

These are very positive changes for AHBs because, under the current law, it costs €90 to register a tenancy. The current law exposes them to a liability of an additional €375 if they are late in making a registration but from this point on, it will be €8.50 per tenancy, which will be payable once a year. I do not see that as overly burdensome from a financial point of view. I recognise the issues from an administrative point of view and I have met with tier 1 AHBs in my own constituency who have made that point to me. They stressed that they are volunteers and need things like a new freezer for a kitchen and they also have tax compliance requirements. We are working with the RTB to make sure that reregistration is as simple as possible. If the system is coherent it will be simple but if we start building a system that has to cater for different things in different ways, simplicity is not achieved and it becomes more burdensome and costly. In light of the changes in the wider rental sector and the changes we are bringing in for the RTB, we see this as a positive change for AHBs.