Mr. Tom Dunne:

It is worth making the point that there has always been a difficulty between the interpretation of what is a licence and what is a tenancy. This goes back to the 1930s before the RTB was even created and before the Residential Tenancies Act. When the original Landlord and Tenant Acts were brought in, obviously, there were an awful lot of attempts to get outside the Landlord and Tenant Acts by creating licences rather than leases. The courts look very unfavourably on any attempt to try to construct an arrangement between two parties that would ordinarily be a lease or tenancy but which is purported to be a licence. The RTB follows the courts' findings. The disposition of adjudicators and decision makers in the RTB would be to look very closely at anything like that and conclude that a duck is a duck. If it is a tenancy, therefore, it is a tenancy and if it is a licence, it is a licence.