Mr. Tom Dunne:

The Deputy is correct. Many landlords see the RTB as an enemy. My answer to that when I was chair is that was not the board's position. Where a landlord will most likely come up against the board's operations will be in a tribunal or adjudication. That is not the board. The people involved are independent and they are employed by the board. Often, they are similar people to landlords such as solicitors, auctioneers and accountants. Many different professions are involved and they sit and make a judgment on the cases before them. The board does not do that, as such. It is not the board that is against them, if one likes. That is a mistake, but I can understand it.

I did it when I was there previously and I am pleased to know the board has been trying to make the information available on the website as accessible to landlords as it can. That is important given the complexity of the legislation. The board must support landlords in setting down guidelines for how they should behave so that, first, they will be less likely to get in trouble and, second, if they do get in trouble then they can get out of trouble.

I will give one particular example of that. One of the things that landlords do not tend to do is monitor the rent coming in as assiduously as they should. Professional landlords do that. They check the rent coming in every Monday or whenever it is. That is the first sign that something might be going wrong with the tenancy, and they are on top of that. They will check and ring the person, because it is not personal. A private landlord is often embarrassed to ring up a tenant to say the rent did not come in, ask why and refer to giving two weeks notice.

It is seen as coming on heavy. That is the way the systems work. Landlords need to be given the confidence to work the system and not to be afraid to tell tenants how it works and that if they do not manage it or do certain things, they will lose out very badly. Landlords have to be helped and assisted in that regard.

Commercial landlords will be a feature of the future. This is happening worldwide. It is happening for macro reasons beyond Ireland as a State. Funnily enough, commercial landlords fear regulation and legislation less than the private landlords. They are quite happy to operate within systems of rent certainty and regulation. The more professional landlords we have in the sector, the better the sector will be.