Paul Gogarty (Dublin Mid West, Independent)

Every now and again, I raise issues on behalf of constituents relating to dodgy, unscrupulous landlords who are not registered with the Residential Tenancies Board. In some cases, they are also exploiting their tenants. In other cases, they are not planning compliant and operate in a very dangerous way. However, when I ask for an update from the Residential Tenancies Board, it says it cannot update parties who have made referrals, it would not be appropriate to do so given the fact the RTB may be pursuing a criminal prosecution and it might prejudice the case and if it is updating any person other than the non-compliant landlord, it could be dangerous and there are also data protection issues.

Can this be looked at? Is there a middle way where there could be a ticket-based system where it says: "under investigation", "processing", "completed" or "no issue found" because it goes into the ether and no one knows what is happening with that landlord? Sometimes it can go on for two years and it is as if they are just getting away with it. We need some sort of transparency as to whether criminal proceedings are being proceeded with.

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