Residential Tenancies and Valuation Bill 2020: Committee and Remaining Stages
Seanad Éireann — 2020-07-31
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Alice-Mary Higgins (IND), National University of Ireland

I move amendment No. 19:
19. In page 8, to delete lines 3 to 5 and substitute the following:
“Amendment of section 106 of the Act of 2004
8. Section 106 of the Act of 2004 is amended by the insertion of the following subsection(4)—
“(4)Subsection (1) of this section may be satisfied by the online streaming of proceedings from the date of passing of this Act to 10 January 2021. If the online streaming of proceeding under subsection (4) is not feasible, then minutes of the proceedings should be taken and made publicly available.”.
I do not like the phrase "the new normal" because I hope we can do something better and different to what we had as the normal. The Bill in itself is an acknowledgement of the fact that we are looking at a longer period of time to deal with the Covid crisis. Many of the things that we do will have to be done differently, but it is very important that doing things differently is not a cutting of corners on due process. That is true of our discussions in the House and it is also true of the very important discussions that take place in tribunals of the RTB. I am concerned about this, although it might have been a necessary measure, of which we got very little notice in the previous legislation. It was the removal of the effect of section 106 of the 2004 Act requiring a public process in respect of a tenancy tribunal in the case of a dispute. To be frank, I believe it would have been wiser when this was pushed through in March when we were in crisis mode to have introduced a temporary suspension of the effect of that section. There was a case to be made for that but, instead, there has been and should have been time to look at doing things differently.
We are going to have tenancy decisions being made and tribunals will be taking place. We have talked about the RTB and its wisdom. We heard one of our colleagues in the Green Party, who spoke eloquently about being part of those tribunals and what happens and the decisions that are made by the RTB. I am reminded of the phrase that for justice to be done it must also be seen to be done, and due process must be seen to be done. That is extremely important. It is also important that individuals who find themselves in a situation, who might not be lawyers that have seen 20 such cases, would be able to see what happened to somebody else like them in a similar situation. For example, if one type of family in a housing estate is affected, that they can see what arguments were made in a similar case and that they would be equipped with the knowledge.
My amendment simply suggested that rather than suspending the full public visibility and attendance at tenancy tribunals given that we must be careful due to Covid, we would look to online streaming of those processes or where online streaming was not possible or appropriate that minutes of the proceedings would be taken and made publicly available. The Minister of State might address the issue by regulation or other procedure. That would allow people to at least know what has transpired and how the RTB makes decisions because a tribunal might make a decision that would affect them in the future.
It is almost an oversight and this probably got carried over from the previous legislation but I would welcome if the Minister of State could give me some sense of how we can ensure as we go into what might be another six, eight or 12 months of restrictions that we will have due process.

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Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:48:31+00:00
Sitting date: 2020-07-31