John Cummins (Waterford, Fine Gael)

I thank Senator Boyhan for submitting his Commencement matter. It gives me an opportunity to address an important matter in the House. The Residential Tenancies Acts 2004 to 2024 regulate tenancies in the residential rental sector covering private renters, cost renters and social renters with approved housing bodies and also regulate tenancies and licences in student-specific accommodation. The Residential Tenancies Acts set out the rights and obligations of landlords and tenants. The Residential Tenancies Board, RTB, was established as an independent statutory body under the Acts to regulate the rental housing sector by maintaining a national register of tenancies, resolving disputes between tenants and landlords, acting to ensure compliance with rental law and providing information to public, tenants and landlords to ensure that tenancies run smoothly and are providing reliable data and insights to inform policy, which the Senator and I would have reviewed as members of the relevant joint Oireachtas committee in the previous term.

The Residential Tenancies Act applies to every dwelling that is the subject of a tenancy, subject to a limited number of exemptions. As the Senator rightly pointed out, the Act does not apply to dwellings let by local authorities to social tenants. The Residential Tenancies (Amendment) Act 2015 brought tenancies relating to approved housing bodies under the remit of the RTB. The Housing Acts 1966 to 2024 govern local authority social housing tenancies. These Acts provide a range of extensive protections for tenants, including security of tenure, management of antisocial behaviour and a differential rents system. Furthermore, local authority tenants can avail of the customer complaints procedure in place in all local authorities regarding any issues they may have in dealing with their local authority in the context of their housing situation. Following the making and processing of any such complaint, if a local authority tenant still considers that they have been adversely affected by a local authority's action or lack of action which they consider unfair or unreasonable, they may make a complaint to the Ombudsman. The Ombudsman can examine complaints about how local authorities carry out their every day executive and administrative activities. These include complaints, delays or failures to take action on housing issues.

The Housing Commission has recommended the regulation of landlord functions relating to local authority-owned dwellings and the formalising of local authority-tenant relationships. Obviously, the Department of housing is reviewing and assessing the report of the Housing Commission, which, as the Senator pointed out, was published in May of last year. Given the breadth of housing policy areas covered in the report, the quantum of recommendations and actions involved and the complex interlinkages between them, this is a significant body of work. It looks at prioritisation, cost implications, sequencing, timing and the practicalities of implementation. Within this context, the recommendation relating to the relationship between local authority tenants and the RTB and any potential changes to that relationship are being considered.