Ms Rosalind Carroll:

The Deputy asked about the RTB's perspective on overcrowding. To echo some of what Mr. Paul Dunne said, we believe there has to be something on overcrowding. There is a definition in the Housing Act 1966 which the CCMA representatives can address. We must also be aware of what is in the Residential Tenancies Act, under which a landlord can serve a notice of termination in respect of somebody who is overcrowded in his or her property. The instance the Deputy mentioned in the "RTE Investigates" programme and some of the very serious incidents we have seen are driven in a totally different way from some of the other instances where people are struggling to afford rents and there might be three children in one room, which would not meet the standards under the Housing Act 1966. We do not want to see something being introduced overnight whereby many tenants would be put at risk of suddenly becoming homeless because we were going to serve notice on them where the local authority had stated it was not in compliance with the regulation. We must be very careful about how we do this.

On our perspective, it is about a definition of serious overcrowding. The Residential Tenancies Act contains a definition of serious anti-social behaviour and one could probably mirror something like it in the serious overcrowding piece.

It is important, particularly because of the type of housing market we have at present, that we try to differentiate between some of the issues which are occurring. A person might need six months or so to find somewhere else that is a more appropriate size or he or she might be working with a local authority to move into social housing. He or she should be not placed in a vulnerable situation in the interim. That is the only thing that we would say requires caution.

To be clear, much of the overcrowding that received media coverage in recent months may not relate to tenancy agreements. It may, in fact, relate to licence agreements. We must consider where they fit within the legislative and regulatory framework. Often, we get cases on overcrowding and it is the landlord bringing the case. It is sometimes down to subletting or to Airbnb. In many cases we have seen, the landlord was not even aware of the overcrowding. We need to examine how this occurs. A landlord might have let to one tenant who went off and made a business and suddenly put ten people into the property. How does that get dealt with in the law? It is a complicated area and we need to be aware of it.

I also wish to comment on the issue of damp and mould. We get many cases coming to us. As I said earlier, over 600 cases came to us last year in terms of standards and maintenance. Another 10% of our cases involved a breach of landlord obligations and many had to do with the standard of the property involved, repairs and so on. Ms Fogarty might comment briefly on the type of cases that come to us and how we deal with them.