Mr. Niall Byrne:

I will deal with the issue of the service quality from the RTB at the moment. There is no doubt that the current situation is a long way short of what one would regard as acceptable. We take it very seriously and are working very hard to remedy it. I have been with the RTB for the last ten months. Coming into the role, I have discovered that our systems and processes are not working well and people are finding it difficult to deal with the RTB. Unfortunately, that is a fact. This is despite the work of many highly committed predecessors of mine over the years. Deputies are well aware of this. We have had numerous Oireachtas queries from members of the committee and other Members of the Oireachtas in relation to it. We have apologised insofar as that makes a difference. I do think it is important for public servants to acknowledge when there are failings. We have apologised to the stakeholders and we have committed to remedying the situation.

The issues we are facing are quite complex. Some of them are quite deep-seated. Some relate to technology developments and some relate to the arrangements we have in place to deal with customer service queries and responses when issues arise. It will take us some time to remedy the technical issues we have. The RTB introduced a new portal-based registration system in November of last year. The design of that system represented a significant investment of public money, time and effort. It will deliver for the RTB and the public but at the moment, unfortunately, it is not delivering to the requisite standard. We are working very hard to remedy that but it is a programme of work that will take us into next year fully complete. It may be quarter 2 of next year before we are fully out of the woods regarding the performance of the system. We have a plan in place. We are working through it on a technical front and I am confident we will see improvement during the course of 2023 but probably not full completion until around quarter 2 of next year.

At the same time, and in recognition of the real problems that people have dealing with us, we are working very hard on the customer service side to support people to work through the registration system and get their tenancies registered. That is very important. The Deputy raised the point about refund of late fees. The legislation allows for the imposition of late fees in circumstances where registrations are made late. Recognising the general difficulties, we had committed to refunding late fees earlier in the year. As of earlier this month, we have ceased charging of late fees. We will refund everyone who has been charged a late fee during the course of December and January. This is a recognition by us that the current situation is not acceptable.

On the customer service side, we contract out all of these services to a third-party provider. That means it is not the RTB directly that provides the customer response but obviously we are responsible for it and it is funded through the RTB's budget. We are working hard on this issue as well. Recently, we have doubled the number of agents who are working on the RTB account. We are putting in the resources to support people but we still have large backlogs; that is the truth of it.