Clare Daly (Dublin Fingal, Independent)
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1352. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government if he will consider proposals to place an obligation on landlords to pre-register a property with the Residential Tenancies Board, RTB, prior to conducting viewings in order to make it more difficult for landlords to evade RTB registration once a tenancy has commenced. [35910/18]

Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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The Residential Tenancies Acts 2004-2016 set out the rights and obligations of landlords and tenants in both the private rental sector and the Approved Housing Bodies (AHB) sector. The Acts provide that landlords in the sector must apply to register a tenancy of a dwelling with the Residential Tenancies Board (RTB) within one month of the commencement of the tenancy.

The RTB was established as an independent statutory body under the Acts to operate a national tenancy registration system and to resolve disputes between landlords and tenants.

The statutory obligation to register a tenancy applies irrespective of the existence of a family relationship between the parties to the tenancy agreement. The RTB actively pursues landlords for non-registration. Failure of a landlord to register a tenancy with the RTB can result in criminal conviction. If convicted, a landlord faces fines of up to €4,000 and/or six months' imprisonment, along with a daily fine of €250 for a continuing offence. In addition, if the tenancy is not registered, the landlord cannot avail of the dispute resolution services of the RTB should an issue arise with the tenancy.

To pursue non-compliant landlords, the RTB receives information on residential rented dwellings from several sources. Where non-compliance is identified, notice and warning letters are sent to the landlord. If the landlord still fails to register, enforcement action is taken through the courts.

The RTB is planning to move towards annual registration of tenancies, which will permit the building of a national rent dataset. This enhanced data will be key to understanding trends and behaviour in the rental market as well as informing future policy decisions. While the RTB is continuously seeking to strengthen its registration function, there are no plans at this time to oblige landlords to register properties before the start of a tenancy.