The frustration of landlords and letting agents following the introduction of a new annual registration system by the Residential Tenancies Board is set out in letters sent to the Minister for Housing, and obtained by RTÉ News under the Freedom of Information Act.
The Residential Tenancies Board introduced a tenancy management system in November 2021 in preparation for the introduction of annual registration which took effect in April last year.
In the months after its introduction, the RTB acknowledged that the system did not work as intended and caused a range of issues for many landlords and agents trying to register their tenancies.
The Irish Property Owners Association, which represents landlords, said registration times have seen some improvement but if a query is not straight forward, it still takes a long time to resolve.
The following are extracts from some of the letters sent to Minister Darragh O'Brien at the time:
Dear Minister O'Brien
I understand that your Department provides the funding to run the Residential Tenancies Board.
In my recent dealings with RTB, that service appears to be in a total MUDDLE - which is a polite and mild description of the shambolic service I am experiencing.
I understand that landlords are now required, since sometime in 2022, to register all tenancies yearly.
I am trying – and repeatedly failing - to re-register one property with RTB.
The property has been occupied by the same tenants, at the same rent, since August 2019.
I am a property owner and letting agent.
In short the RTB website is a complete mess. It is not capable of dealing with the registrations, renewals and deletions of tenancies necessary to comply with the new regulations. In addition the waiting time for phone calls to be answered is approximately one hour. The waiting time for a reply on the webchat is 90 minutes.
I have wasted hour upon hour trying to comply with the new regulations, all to no avail. I am not paid for this.
Small wonder that the smaller property owners have left this business.
I'm second generation in a family business that has operated for 28 years specialising in the rental market. We are responsible for 700 properties with 13 staff so we have to complete 700 individual registrations on this new system.
We have provided very basic details to the RTB that we are a company and not an individual.
The RTB has the incorrect information on file for us. The new RTB system means that we have to now submit 700 forms called "tenancy update forms' to resolve that one incorrect piece of information. Do you understand what something like this can do to a small local family business?
I am writing to your office out of sheer frustration with the RTB.
As a small private landlord, I have never increased the rent on my properties during any tenancy, I have always complied with RTB registrations for each tenancy and my accounts have always been lodged with Revenue in a timely fashion.
I attempted to pay my annual registration fee through the website, however, despite the annual retention fee of €40, which I have managed to pay online, my account on the RTB website shows an outstanding balance of €180.
I have done everything in my power to contact the RTB regarding this amount since July 24th, however my 4 emails have not been responded to, when invited to "webchat" I am informed that all agents are busy and when you call their telephone number you endure an insufferable wait until such time as you are advised to log on to your account on their website... a vicious circle.
The RTB acknowledged publicly during 2022 that the system performance and customer services issues were not acceptable and that the Board sincerely regretted the impact these issues had on members of the public having business with the RTB.
It committed to working to resolve the underlying issues and to providing more support via the contact centre.
Minister O'Brien met with the RTB on a number of occasions throughout 2022 and the issue around the registration of tenancies successfully with the RTB was discussed.
Officials from the Minister's Department have engaged with the RTB on a weekly basis into 2023 to provide additional support to the RTB as they improved their registration process.
A spokesperson for the RTB said, in order to support landlords and agents a range of measures were introduced, including increased staffing in the RTB contact centre to address backlogs, a review of contact channels to ensure complex queries could be addressed, and a programme of necessary technical improvements.
"Thanks to these ongoing efforts the situation has now been stabilised," the spokesperson said.
Mary Conway, Chairperson of the IPOA, said still experience some difficulties registering tenancies but the biggest issue for landlords is the length of time it takes to resolve a dispute with tenants.
As well as maintaining a register of tenancies, it also provides a dispute resolution service for tenants and landlords. "It takes 12 weeks approximately to get to a mediation which is the first point where you try and resolve the problem with the tenants. If that doesn't work, you go to adjudication that can take 5 to 6 months and then if you get an adjudication order that can take 10 weeks. So if you have a rogue tenant, it can take a year to get any kind of engagement or a decision from the RTB and that's terribly frustrating," Ms Conway said.
She said if rent was lodged with the RTB which at a later stage could be given to the landlord, it would be mean landlords would not be out of pocket when there is a dispute. "That would be a help but that's not happening at the moment."
Minister O'Brien said, "The RTB has assured my department that there have been substantial improvements to the issues raised in the registration of tenancies with the RTB.
"Numerous technical improvements have been made resulting in the ability for landlords to successfully fulfil their legislative requirement to register each tenancy annually. Officials from my department continue to support the RTB to ensure it has all the resources it needs to meet any remaining challenges."
