Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)
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563. To ask the Minister for Environment, Community and Local Government if a private rental tenant who has been in a tenancy for more than 12 months and who has not had a rent review since 2014 will be subject to a rent review in 2016, subject to the period between rent reviews being no less than 24 months. [44848/15]

Paudie Coffey (Waterford, Fine Gael)
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Section 20 of the Residential Tenancies Act 2004 provided that a review of rent may not take place more than once in any period of 12 months or in the first 12 months of the tenancy. The Residential Tenancies (Amendment) Act 2015, which was enacted on 4 December 2015, amends Section 20 to provide that rent reviews can only take place every 24 months rather than every 12 months. This amendment involves no change to the mechanism for determining rents but provides the tenant with a longer fixed period of predictable rent. This measure will have effect for a period of 4 years, after which the duration between reviews will revert to 12 months.

The new provision applies to both new tenancies and to tenancies that commenced prior to the coming into operation of this section. It takes effect from the date of the last review – so if a tenant had a rent review in July 2014, it is intended that the next rent review will not be until July 2016.

Section 26 of the 2015 Act extends the period of notice of a new rent that a landlord must give their tenant from 28 days to 90 days.