Mr. Niall Byrne:

I might defer to my colleagues, given that I am not as au faitwith all of the details as I would be if I had been in the job for longer.

Suffice to say, from my point of view as incoming director, I am very clear that the RTB needs to be a responsive regulator. We need to take all appropriate steps to fully carry out our functions in the public interest. As a regulator that maintains a registration database, it is very important that everything that is registerable is registered, that the registers are maintained to a high standard and updated regularly and that there are ongoing efforts to maintain the integrity of the registers. That is absolutely the intent. The maintenance of registers in practice can be a complex matter. It is not an easy thing to do. To give a kind of categorical declaration with regard to a register at any point in time is probably not something I would ever be in a position to do. Putting in place all the necessary steps, arrangements, processes and assurances to give the very highest level of assurance we can, however, is something to which I am personally very committed as the incoming director.

We have programmes to update the register. At each renewal date, we write to landlords, remind them of their registration requirements and prompt them to register their properties. If anybody out there is not registering their properties, we should be taking steps in relation to that. We have investigative and enforcement powers in this regard. Failure to register is a criminal offence. We also have powers to sanction landlords for improper behaviour, and failure to register is an improper behaviour. Some of those powers are relatively new and still being tested by the RTB but we have powers in that regard. It is very important that we use them to the full extent possible.