Jim O'Keeffe (Cork South West, Fine Gael)
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Question 167: To ask the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government if he is satisfied with the situation whereby, as a result of the procedures required by the Private Residential Tenancy Board, a property owner may have to wait for upwards to two years to have a non-paying tenant excluded from their property; and his proposals for reform in this regard. [24321/09]

Michael Finneran (Roscommon-South Leitrim, Fianna Fail)
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My Department has no function in the operational matters of the Private Residential Tenancies Board (PRTB), which is an independent statutory body established under the Residential Tenancies Act 2004. In these circumstances, it would not be appropriate for me to comment on specific cases or classes of case.

The Residential Tenancies Act sets out dispute resolution services and procedures to be delivered by the PRTB and specifies notice periods, cooling-off periods and other related timeframes. However, it is acknowledged that, partly as a consequence of the Board's success in ensuring compliance with the registration requirements of the Act, and the resulting large workloads arising, the processing times for dispute resolution are not yet optimal. At the same time, it is important to note that less than 1% of all registered tenancies seek to avail of the PRTB's dispute resolution mechanisms. This indicates that a healthy and stable landlord-tenant relationship prevails in the vast majority of tenancies.

The PRTB is committed to delivering its services in as timely a manner as possible and it has set out a clear strategic approach to reducing its backlog of disputes cases. My Department supports the PRTB in this approach and, last year, in response to the large and ongoing volume of work involved, a request from the Board of the PRTB for the recruitment of an additional 14 permanent staff, to bring the permanent staffing complement from 26 to 40, was approved. This has been of significant benefit to the Board in dealing with the administrative work associated with the processing of dispute cases.

The PRTB has taken a number of other initiatives to optimise its throughput of dispute cases, including the introduction of a system of paper-based adjudications on a trial basis. Early indications are that these initiatives are helping to speed up the dispute resolution process. In the longer term, an automated document management system will also be introduced by the PRTB as part of their recently adopted ICT strategy, the roll-out of which has now commenced and which, I understand, the PRTB expect to have implemented by the end of 2010. This should also yield staffing and process efficiencies for the organisation in general and expedite the processing of dispute cases in particular.

Finally, I recently announced my intention to review the provisions of the Residential Tenancies Act 2004 under which the Private Residential Tenancies Board (PRTB) operates. The purpose of this review is to consider whether the Act best supports the PRTB's key functions and whether legislative amendments would support either the achievement of additional operational efficiencies by the PRTB in the delivery of those functions or the broader good working of the private rented sector. I hope that this review will yield preliminary outcomes by Autumn 2009.