Barry Cowen (Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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129. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government his plans to establish a rental property price register run by the Residential Tenancies Board, as recommended by a person (details supplied); and his views on whether making information publicly available on rental levels for various property types in different areas would improve market information for renters and landlords alike. [25185/17]

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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Compiled by the ESRI and based on the RTB’s own register of over 300,000 tenancies, the RTB Rent Index is a valuable source of information and provides standardised average rent data at Local Electoral Area level based on the actual rents being paid for rented properties throughout the State.  The rent index is updated quarterly and shows the percentage change in rents over the previous quarter and over the previous twelve months.

When the Rent Predictability Measure was introduced in December last year,  I made a commitment that my Department would work with the RTB to ensure that more refined data was available to enable more specific targeting of the measure to smaller areas where severe pressures were being experienced.  Close collaboration between the RTB and the ESRI has resulted in the revision and development of the methodology for producing the RTB's Rent Index so that RTB data can now be used to calculate and monitor changes in average rents at the level of Local Electoral Areas.  On 29 March 2017, the RTB published the Rent Index Report in relation to Quarter 4 2016, which includes a summary of the data used as the criteria for designating rent pressure zones in relation to all Local Electoral Areas in the country, allowing all interested parties to see exactly where their area stands in relation to rents and possible designation.

The RTB website () also contains an Average Monthly Rent Report which enables people to check the average rent being paid for five different categories of dwelling types throughout the country, in both urban and rural areas. This enables people to check what is the actual rent being paid for, say, a semi-detached house or a two-bed apartment in their neighbourhood, and in other parts of the country.

We have taken measures to improve transparency when rents are being determined.  In Rent Pressure Zones, when the rent is being set for a new tenancy, the landlord is obliged to inform the tenant of the previous rent paid for the property and the time at which it was set.  This allows the tenant concerned to see any rent increase being proposed and assess whether the rent being asked is in line with the legislation.

The suggestion being put forward for an individualised publicly available register of rent prices for all tenancies, would place significant personal information, of both landlords and tenants, in the public domain and would undoubtedly raise significant data protection concerns.

The RTB's Rent Index Report and the Average Monthly Rent Report are publicly available on the RTB website and, while the RTB is continuously seeking to strengthen its registration and data collection function, there are no plans at this time to introduce the type of register proposed.