Mr. Richard McMahon:

I thank the Cathaoirleach and the committee for the invitation to speak here today on this matter. I am assistant director general in the social and demographic statistics directorate of the Central Statistics Office. I am joined by Mr. Cormac Halpin, senior statistician in housing, and Mr. Kieran Culhane, senior statistician in national accounts. Mr Culhane and Mr Halpin represented the CSO at this committee’s hearing on 10 October 2023 when it initially considered this matter. At the meeting, an update was provided on the work commenced in July 2023 with the Residential Tenancies Board following the publication of Census of Population 2022 Profile 2 – Housing in Ireland to help identify the difference between the census and RTB datasets on private landlords. At the committee meeting, the CSO also undertook to provide any additional insights possible on the characteristics of the properties or the rental arrangements.

Developing these insights has been a large project involving considerable data matching as well as in-depth analysis of the characteristics of the identified properties using administrative datasets such as the Revenue Commissioners' local property tax data. In line with our mandate under the Statistics Act 1993, access to such information is allowed for statistical purposes only. In addition, the CSO has no role in the requirement to register with the RTB, and the research paper should not be read as a determination on the requirement of a property to register with the RTB.

The results of this research project were published by the CSO on 29 July 2024 under the title Rented from Private Landlords 2022.

It should be noted that, while the research used statistically sound matching and analysis methodologies, factors related to timing and data quality do impact the results.

The first task of the research project was to identify the gap between the two data sets. On census night, 3 April 2022, 330,632 households indicated that they rented their homes from a private landlord. The RTB’s published figure for the number of private rented tenancies registered with it as of 31 December 2022 was 246,453.

This data discrepancy, or difference between the two sources, amounts to 84,179 tenancies. After the exclusion of certain identified properties, such as those found to be owned by a local authority, 73,002 private rentals were identified which appeared on the census but were not present on the RTB register. We refer to this number as the "difference set" requiring further analysis.

To provide as much insight as possible, the CSO undertook an assessment of administrative data sets on objective characteristics of the dwellings, rent payment data and the reference person of the household or owner of the property for these 73,002 private rentals. This statistical model helped us to identify the characteristics of private rented arrangements based on the characteristics of dwellings registered with the RTB in those administrative data sets. Arising from this, two categories were identified, as follows. The first is dwellings with possible informal letting arrangements, that is, those rental properties which were not registered with the RTB and possessed characteristics which may indicate they may have been subject to informal rental arrangements. The second category is dwellings with possible formal rental arrangements, that is, those rental properties which are not currently registered with the RTB but possess certain characteristics which make them likely to be in the private rental market and therefore required to register with the RTB. The analysis indicated the existence of 47,754, or 65.4%, possible informal rental arrangements and 25,248, or 34.6%, possible formal rental arrangements. As we were limited as to the administrative data we could compare with the RTB register, we could not be definitive on the possible informal arrangements that applied at the time of the census. However, by categorising the data in this way, we were able to use census information to provide additional insights around the characteristics of these potential arrangements as identified utilising administrative data sets. Reviewing the census information under the headings geography, dwelling, householder and rent, we found the following: there was a higher prevalence of possible informal dwellings in predominantly rural local authority areas; that possible informal rented dwellings were more likely to be detached houses, whereas possible formal rented dwellings were more likely to be terraced or semi-detached houses; that households living in possible formal rented dwellings were more likely to contain unrelated people than those living in possible informal rented dwellings; and that those living in possible informal rented dwellings were paying 30% less rent than the households in the possible formal rented dwellings.

I wish to note that, in accordance with the Statistics Act 1993, data published by the CSO is published in aggregate form only, which means no person or household can be identified from the data we publish. On this basis, and in line with fundamental principles for official statistics, no identifiable information related to the data sets. analysed in this report can be shared with the committee, the RTB or any other agency. I thank the RTB and the housing sector stakeholders who engaged with us throughout the project.

We are happy to take questions from the committee to inform its consideration of this matter.