Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 24 February 2022

Public Accounts Committee

2020 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Residential Tenancies Board - Financial Statements 2020

9:30 am

Mr. Niall Byrne:

We are the Residential Tenancies Board, so we are focused on tenancies. By implication, we obviously have information on landlords. However, I would make the point that, primarily, we are the tenancies board as opposed to the landlord regulation board. We do not proactively register landlords other than in relation to existing tenancies. Landlords can leave the market. They might come back to the market. Our focus is on the actual tenancies. We look at who is operating a particular tenancy and who the landlord is in a particular case. This is partly to do with the earlier questions about our new technology platform. That platform is about building and supporting a much more developed capability in relation to regulation than we would have had on our previous technology platforms. That gives us capacity to look at the rental sector in a much more holistic way. Therefore, it allows us to be more proactive in how we use our powers in the public interest to intervene in circumstances where some landlords might perhaps be engaged in ongoing forms of improper behaviour and non-compliance with the various rules and regulations.