Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Senator for putting forward the amendment. In the first instance, removing the Circuit Court from the confirmation process is unconstitutional. I will explain why, even if it were constitutional, I believe it would be necessary to have the provision in place. I do not like just to say it is unconstitutional and shut down debate. If the Senator does not mind, I will take a couple of minutes to talk through it.

One of the things that we are trying to do with the Bill is to give greater powers to the RTB to act independently of tenants. Where a tenant is in a bad situation with a landlord, at the moment the RTB cannot investigate unless the tenant makes a complaint, which puts that tenant in a very difficult position. The balance of power is unfair in that instance. If the tenant were to make a complaint, then all of a sudden the landlord's behaviour, which the tenant thinks or perceives to be unfair, could get even worse. We want to provide that the RTB can investigate its own inspections based on the work its inspectors will do, these being the new inspectors and authorising officers whom we are providing to it, and for people to make anonymous complaints and everything else. Once the RTB decides to make an inspection, we have to make sure it has a process whereby it can sanction the landlord for bad behaviour.

We have done two things in the Bill in this regard. We have introduced new criminal sanctions for landlords. It is wrong and unfair on other landlords to call the people in these cases landlords where human rights are being abused by putting people in unsuitable, unsafe and overcrowded accommodation, the types of things that are more akin to what people do when they are human trafficking. There are new criminal offences that will act as a strong deterrent to landlords from behaving in that way, but where they are, the RTB and the courts can properly go at them.