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

I thank the Deputy for the amendment. We are not talking about having the regulator step into the role of the Residential Tenancies Board, RTB. The regulator and RTB will come to a memorandum of understanding on all of these issues, as the regulator will with other regulators in this sector, such as the Charities Regulator. That is common practice. It will not be about setting a new policy when it comes to matters such as standards. This is about financial standards, governance standards and performance standards. They should be reported on in such a way that people are clear that they were in line with policy or what is in the law. It will still be the role of the RTB to have that involvement and that place for the tenant and the landlord. We are not trying to step into the role of the RTB. A letter to this effect was sent to members of the committee by the Housing Agency. I do not know if everyone saw it. It was a three or four page letter, making the point that it was not seeking to move into someone else's space, to move outside policy or to change policy. This was about financial performance, governance performance and standards performance, so that people can see that things are being done with regard to response time for repairs or bringing voids back into use. It is not about the regulator stepping in and saying that a certain type of standard for internal accommodation is appropriate and that it can ignore the RTB.