Ms Lucia Crimin:

I thank the Deputy for the question and for bringing this to our attention. First, on behalf of myself and the RTB, that is not the standard that we would hold ourselves to. It is not an example of what we could call good customer service. In that regard, we very much regret that it has been this particular landlord's experience with us.

Without going into the details, the Deputy mentioned that the person is a non-national. This time last year, the system had no pathway through for non-national landlords. I am pleased to say that since 12 July, through our online portal non-national landlords can now register. This was an unfortunate feature of our system. This time last year, there were a number of landlord types that could not come through, and that has been the programme we have worked on implementing over the last 12 months.

As Mr. Byrne mentioned, as any regulator or registration body like the RTB would want, we want to make compliance with the requirement to register as simple as possible. I very much appreciate what the Deputy is saying, in that it has not been any kind of a model for that individual. I am happy to speak with the Deputy afterwards, if that is okay, to get some of those details and see if we can resolve matters for that individual. As Mr. Byrne has said about our approach over the last 12 months, we know there were many of those kinds of examples this time last year. They were coming to me in various directions. We have resolved the vast majority of those. We are trying to build a customer service and a registration portal that is easy and effective. I would go so far as saying that we have come a long way in the last 12 months but I reiterate that the experience of the Deputy's constituent is not what we would accept.