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

We discussed this at length previously. The confirmation of the court cannot be removed if the ultimate outcome is going to be a sanction and the publication of the sanction. Where there is no compliance or acceptance by the landlord, for example, where he or she has acted offside in some way and does not accept that he or she has acted poorly and wants to take it all the way, it has to go to court. We looked at this matter with the Attorney General, and it has to stand. It has to be there at the end of the process if we want to impose the sanction and publish the details. However, there is an official sanction, which involves going all the way through the process before sanctioning, but the voluntary acceptance of a type of sanction is also possible and can happen at a much earlier date. When we discussed this previously, it was not clear if, once this investigation had begun, the only way to come to a conclusion that satisfied all parties was to go through the entire process and end up in court. There are three or four instances in which the process will end based on different outcomes from the investigation. Mediation is now available in the first 60 days as a possible outcome as part of this regime. Both parties can be brought together and a solution can be reached which both are happy with. Another potential ending is if the complaint is not valid, meaning that one would not have to go to the court. Landlords were worried that they would have to go all the way to court to confirm that a complaint was not valid, but that is not the case. The landlord, under section 148 and the different subsections I set out, can acknowledge that he or she is in the wrong. In that case there is no official sanction but there will be some sort of remedy if it is done within the first 40 to 66 or 70 days.

If the aggrieved party, for example, the landlord, decides that he or she wants to go further, there is then the possibility of an oral hearing with the investigation report having been given by the authorised officer to the aggrieved party. A decision might be made then that there has been no improper conduct and that there will be no sanction. Alternatively, there could still be a settlement if the parties wanted to take that route and such a solution was acceptable to all parties. Once we go beyond that point, resolution could potentially take some time. That is a long way of answering the Deputy's question. We have found ways in which participants can step out of this process at an early stage. However, if someone refuses to accept that he or she has a liability and one wants to pursue a formal sanction and publication, we will have to go through the Circuit Court confirmation process.