Ms Louise Loughlin:

It is important to understand that the RTB has a number of different compliance pathways. There is a civil process under Part 7A of the Residential Tenancies Act 2004, often referred to as investigations and sanctions. The RTB can investigate landlords for ten defined breaches of rental law, which can result in a civil sanction of up to €15,000 and costs of up to €15,000 for each breach of rental law. We also have a criminal process for registration enforcement under section 144 of the legislation, whereby we can prosecute landlords for failing to register a tenancy. This can result in a fine of up to €4,000. Last year, we also completed a compliance intervention pilot to support landlords to rectify low-risk, minor breaches of rental law before escalating their cases for investigation and sanction.

On the Deputy's question about investigations, we focused a significant amount of our resources in 2024 - as the director said, we have eight investigators for the State - on investigations into high-risk offenders, which led to higher levels of sanction than previously seen. In total, we published 75 confirmed sanctions in 2024, with almost €250,000 in sanctions paid by landlords, a significant increase on the approximately €64,000 in monetary sanctions paid in 2023. Since 2019, landlords have paid €370,000 in sanctions. Our investigations have returned €467,000 in overpaid rent to tenants.