Ms Rosalind Carroll:

Deputy Catherine Byrne also raised the issue of properties being put up for sale and landlords using that as an excuse to remove tenants. It is an offence under the Residential Tenancies Act to do that. Deputy Byrne also spoke about the necessity for people to be aware of their rights. I am not sure that tenants are specifically aware of their rights in this area, which is an issue we need to work on. Currently, a tenant who has been served notice to leave a property and takes up the matter with us, which is later deemed valid, has a right of recommencement of tenancy in the same property.

Along with that, as I stated, it is an offence for the landlord and one we would take very seriously. Over the past week or two we had a quick look to see how prevalent that was, and of the disputes taken to us, it makes up less than 1% of current disputes. That does not mean it is not happening and it may mean that people just are not aware of their particular rights. It is an area we must do more on in order that tenants understand the issue.

We were asked more generally about what we can do to advertise and let tenants know about their rights. We have done two significant advertising campaigns and we will certainly continue to do that. We are also trying as much as possible to go out to community groups and other avenues through the local authorities and so on to get to tenants. On a more strategic level, we do not have a national tenant organisation in Ireland, which makes it very difficult for us even to engage with stakeholders. We speak with Threshold and organisations like it but there is no national tenant organisation so it is always difficult for us to communicate with the tenant. With the overall increase of non-Irish nationals in the rental sector, we have tried to ensure we produce materials in multiple languages and so on. We will continue to try to put ourselves out there more than we have done in the past. For example, we understand education and awareness is one of the critical issues for tenants in understanding their rights.

The Chairman asked about bedsits.