Ms Rosalind Carroll:

We register tenancies and the absolute number of tenancies has increased to 324,000. We had 319,000 at the end of 2015 so that was only in December. In that period of time, tenancies continued to increase, as did the landlord numbers. Given the legislation, there is not necessarily always an incentive for a tenant or landlord to tell us when a tenancy ends so our figures are not absolutes. They are guides to trends but they are probably relatively accurate.

In terms of rent certainty measures, not all landlords always increase rents. Perhaps that is reflected in the fact that we have not seen exits from the market. The changes introduced have been limited. The question about exits from the market depends on how broad-changing the changes affecting the market one intends to introduce would be and how quickly they would be introduced - whether they will come in overnight or over a periodic length of time. 123.ie published a survey last week; I am not sure if the committee is aware of it. The survey included landlords in a relatively large sample. It echoed much of our original DKM survey. It said that at least 29% of landlords were looking to exit the market but were waiting for their properties to return to a certain value before they did so. The question mark relates not so much to the rent regulation side as it does to the sale side and whether questions arise in respect of whether one can sell with or without vacant possession and whether that would suddenly lead to those people making decisions to exit the market now. Likewise, questions arise as to whether the banks will start pushing on in respect of the 29,000 people in mortgage arrears. We do not know the answer to these questions. Many of these are unknowns. We can only look at the data. I am not here to tell the committee what to do. It is more a question of whether when it does it, it is aware of where the impacts might be.

Maybe it is about the direction of travel and having certainty on that and whether any uncertainties in the meantime will create more pressure points in terms of supply. That would be the main issue.

With regard to the security of tenure issue and the experience elsewhere, security of tenure is generally much stronger in our European counterparts and sale with tenants in situis much more common. However, we are only at the start of a new culture of renting in this country and as well as changing the law, perhaps we need to consider a change of culture. It is common for people who rent commercially to sell with tenants in situand that increases the value of the property at the point of sale. We work a lot with our stakeholders, both landlords and tenants, but the landlord representative groups to whom we have spoken have indicated that sale at the moment without vacant possession would lead to a decrease of approximately 25% in the property's value. Other countries protect against that in regulation by providing that people must sell with tenantsin situ. They cannot evict tenants just because of a sale but if the property price is to change by more than 20%, then that would be an exception. There are examples of trying to deal with those specific issues.

On the changing profile of the landlord sector, we do not have specific numbers. I referred to in excess of 80%. Our feel is that the REITs and the institutional landlords make up 1% to 2% of the sector, but that is not necessarily 1% to 2% of the properties. We do not have the definitives on that yet but that is where we feel the figures are.

The Deputy asked my opinion on REITs and what impact they are having on the rental sector. Institutional investment in the rental sector has been called for as long as I have been in the housing business, which is more than 16 years. They have something to bring in terms of professionalism, quality of accommodation and so on. It is important to ensure competition in the market going forward and to monitor the rate of increase in significant landlords to ensure we suddenly do not have an overall investor of one size whereby the competition in the market would evaporate. I referred in my opening statement to how this is balanced elsewhere. The not-for-profit sector also provides rental housing to a much broader element of society and that helps to dampen the overall market.

The Deputy asked for an explanation as to why rent arrears are increasing. Our indications are rent arrears are increasing because people simply cannot afford the rents. The overholding scenario tends to differ. There are genuine cases of overholding and some of those come through our mediation service, which has been successful in securing voluntary agreements between landlords and tenants to give people time extensions to find properties where they think they can get a property in another three months rather than in a month's time. They are genuine cases where people cannot find alternative accommodation. There is a small cohort of people in overholding cases which result from non-compliance. They are in arrears or they have never paid rent. The overholding in those cases is slightly different. There is a mixture of cases, and overholding only occurs in a small number of cases where people have not paid any rent whatsoever.

Deputy Cowen referred to our staffing levels. We had 70 staff at one point and that reduced to 33. We are now back up to 40 and we have sanction for a further ten, which is the result of the deposit protection scheme and the recent legislative changes.

Depending on how far the rental sector expands, that will need to be increased somewhat, and depending on what comes out in terms of the overall reform of the sector, we may need further resources. At the moment, we rely heavily on an outsource centre to provide our services. While we have 40 staff, there are more than 30 staff working in an outsource centre providing our front-line customer service. We also have legal providers who provide us with legal advice on our judicial-type services. That is an overall reflection of our services at the moment.