Mr. Niall Byrne:

There are probably two aspects to the question as I understand it. One is probably with regard to a situation where a tenant has a dispute with a landlord. The other is related but probably separate where somebody makes a complaint to us about potential improper behaviour by a landlord and how we follow up on that.

I take the Deputy's point about this issue with addresses. I have discussed this with my colleagues. Why is it not possible to find an address for a landlord? Why would a situation obtain whereby a person would not be able to have his or her rights vindicated by a body like the RTB because an address cannot be found? I do not regard that as an acceptable situation. That needs to be addressed.

As I mentioned earlier with regard to our new strategy, one of the things to which I am very committed is calling out a number of these issues that relate to the RTB's effectiveness as a regulator. Originally, the RTB was set up to be a disputes resolution body. It also registered the tenancies in order that there would be knowledge about what the actual cohort of tenancies to be regulated consisted of. The RTB was not a very proactive type of regulator, however, and it did not have a range of appropriate regulatory powers. Some of those have come to us in recent years, but much of this is still underdeveloped in the face of some of what we face externally.

The reality is that most people are good tenants and the research shows this. Most landlords are good landlords. That is very important. Members of the committee have said this already and it is important we say this for the public record. Unfortunately, there are a small number of both parties who do not meet that high standard and cause significant difficulty for each other and for other people. I am very keen we would develop our regulatory approaches, methods and strategies so that we are much more proactive. I am very keen we would take a proactive approach towards something like finding out an address. As far as I am concerned, it should be possible to find the address and we should do that. If we do not have powers to do it currently, then we should ask to acquire those powers.