Ms Ann-Marie O'Reilly:

I believe that the RTB has been doing some work checking notices for sales to see if those properties were eventually sold. As to whether it is doing the same in terms of checking where a family member moves in, I am not so sure.

I do not know if it will become an established part of its ongoing work. As it stands, it is very much up to the tenant to police what is going on. It is up to the tenant to keep an eye on the old property he or she was in to see if a family member moved in or if it was rented to somebody else. If someone sees that occurring, he or she can lodge a dispute or notify the inspection team in the RTB. Unfortunately, by the time a person packs up, gets somewhere else, moves house and settles down again, he or she is not bothering with that. I do not think there are any established mechanisms for undertaking that follow-up.

In respect of the resources to inspect private rented housing, there has been an increase in resources, in particular in the past two to three years, and a move to establish specialist inspection teams in some of the local authorities. I spoke to some of the staff responsible for that across a number of local authorities. Some local authorities are far more experienced than others. Not only do they need the resources to carry out the inspections, but they need the resources to continue to engage with the landlord and to get the landlord to bring the property up to standard. That requires a certain skill set, apart from just knowing what the minimum standards are. There are instances where the landlord does not have the finances to upgrade the property and, in such cases, perhaps they could be steered into the repair and lease scheme. More money has been put into this area in recent years, but we have a proposal whereby we believe a greater structure could be put in place to get the properties brought up to standard.