The government announced new plans for rent controls, but where are the plans to enforce them?

The government should consider how equipped the Residential Tenancies Board (RTB) is to enforce the law, along with its changes to rent controls, the head of the rental regulator said earlier this year.

In March, the RTB Director Rosemary Steen wrote to the Housing Agency to offer her views on its review of the rent pressure zones (RPZ) system that governs how rents are set. 

“We believe that any decision to continue or modify RPZ policy should be considered together with the appropriateness of the mechanisms available to the RTB to enforce the law,” the letter says.

The letter flagged several challenges with the current law, and suggested a means to bring transparency to rents – like a public rent register – would help.

Although, it also said, “The contents of this letter should not be interpreted as the RTB advocating for any specific policy or approach.”

In its report in May last year, the Housing Commission had said the government needs to put in place “as a matter of urgency, an effective and proactive enforcement system that is proportionate and in line with the scale of the sector”. 

“The regulation of rent or other parts of the rental system will not be effective without effective enforcement,” its report says. 

The Housing Agency had been tasked by the Department of Housing with reviewing options for how rents are set in Ireland. But its review didn’t go into detail on the practicalities of enforcing its recommendations. 

A spokesperson for the Housing Agency said earlier this week that its review “considers policy options for the future of rent regulation in Ireland to the purpose of considering whether rent controls should be continued, adapted, removed, or replaced”.  

“The Review did not consider operational issues relating to the RTB,” they said. “This is a matter for the RTB and the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage.”

On 10 June, the Department of Housing announced it had settled, based on that review, on major changes. Those changes will affect tenants differently depending on when their apartment was built, when their tenancy started, and how many other properties their landlord owns. 

They include the right to raise rents in line with the consumer price index, for new apartments where construction starts after the government’s announcement. And, the right to reset rent for tenancies started after 1 March 2026 to market rates every six years or when tenants move on, unless there is a no-fault eviction.

But its announcement did not mention any changes to how the RTB monitors and enforces these complex laws around RPZs.

A spokesperson for the Department of Housing said that it couldn’t answer with any specificity a series of questions about the process for enforcement and the issues flagged in the RTB’s letter.

The government has already passed emergency legislation to extend RPZs to the whole country, to limit rent increases for tenants there to 2 percent a year, or inflation if lower, for now.

Now, legislation will be developed later this year to give effect to the new rent control and tenancy measures, the spokesperson said. “The matters that you raise will be examined in the framing of that new legislation.”

Enforcing the laws

The Housing Agency’s final report on its review of the RPZ system included a short section on “monitoring and enforcement”, laying out in a paragraph that the RTB can investigate potential breaches. 

The issue of how effective that is came up in the survey that the Housing Agency did of the government bodies – the Department of Housing, Housing Agency, councils and the RTB – that it considered to be involved in administering and designating rent pressure zones. 

“It was many respondents’ experience that breaches are not sufficiently monitored or enforced,” says the Housing Agency report. 

“Indeed, enforcement was identified as ‘the greatest issue with the RPZ system at present’ by one respondent”, it says.

The report also mentions that it is important that the rent-control system doesn’t unintentionally foster a shadow rental market, outside of the rules. (Tenants on licences are an example of that, as are unregistered tenancies, and subletting arrangements.)

“The monitoring and enforcement mechanisms which police the price control system seem likely to play an important role in suppressing a shadow market,” says the Housing Agency report.

The asks

There were 240,600 registered tenancies in Ireland as of the first quarter of this year, shows RTB data. 

The RTB database currently includes 197 sanctions for failing to comply with RPZ laws, since it got the powers to investigate breaches in July 2019.

Lucia Crimmins, a deputy director at the RTB, told TDs and senators last year that it was looking to run bulk campaigns based on the data it has to target non-compliance with rent-setting laws. 

The RTB had struggled to do this effectively in early 2022, partly because of inadequate data at the time. Late last year, it started another compliance campaign, writing to more than 8,600 landlords. That’s still underway. 

In her letter to the Housing Agency, Steen said that the complexity of existing rules can lead to non-compliance among otherwise compliant landlords. 

The complexity of the rules can also impact the investigation process, she said. “Further changes, depending on their nature, may increase the complexity and time taken to assess breaches of RPZ rules by RTB investigators.”

Meanwhile, she said, the process laid out in the act to investigate what is called “improper conduct” – including breaches of RPZ rules – is lengthy. 

It requires  “an investigation by an Authorised Officer, issuing of a sanction by an independent decision maker and court confirmation of the sanction”, she says.

During the implementation phase of any new RPZ rules, the RTB recommends more consideration of alternatives to this process, she said. “Such as fixed fines, that could strengthen our ability to enforce compliance with any continued or modified RPZ rules at scale and at pace.”

Steen also highlighted a gap in the RTB’s powers to force landlords to lower illegally raised rents.

The sanction decisions “cannot compel a landlord to refund or reset the rent, nor can it inform the tenant that their rent is in breach”, she said. 

So landlords who do not engage with the investigation process may continue to breach after receiving a sanction, it said. “Decisions should be able to compel landlords to change their rent.”

Investigation by the RTB’s internal team isn’t the only route for tenants to challenge the level that their rent is set at.

Tenants can file disputes but – in cases of new tenants – they have to know and be able to prove what a previous tenant has paid. 

Steen, in her letter, said that: “We believe that if tenants had access to rent data for their tenancy, either rent data on the registration letter or published rent data on a public register, this would help to drive compliance with RPZ rules.”