Housing and Residential Tenancies (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2026: Committee and Remaining Stages
Seanad Éireann — 2026-07-14
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Lynn Ruane (IND), University of Dublin

I move amendment No. 22:
In page 24, to delete lines 17 to 39.
This amendment deletes the provisions in section 22 that amend section 19 of the Residential Tenancies Act 2004. Section 19 is concerned with the prohibition of rents above market rent. Our amendment removes the deletion of subsections (6A), (6B) and (6C) of section 19 of the 2004 Act and deletes the newly inserted subsections (6D), (6E), (6F) and (6G). Currently, subsections (6A) and (6C) of section 19 of the 2004 Act provide that where a landlord raises the rent in contravention of the provisions of section 19, he or she will have committed an offence. This Bill removes those subsections and substitutes the process with an initial notice served to the landlord by the RTB. The notice period allows for a period of 28 days for the landlord to comply with the provisions of section 19 before he or she has committed an offence.
We believe these provisions dilute protections for renters against landlords who seek to raise rents beyond legally permitted limits. They allow landlords who are raising rents in contravention of the 2004 Act to avoid offences for those acts by delaying the prosecution of those offences for a month. As such, we are opposing this section.
I spent some time thinking about this amendment because I generally try to view the creation of offences in a very particular way, but obviously it is already an offence. If we know that somebody is breaking the law in any other situation, he or she is not afforded 28 days to adhere to the law he or she just broke. If I burgle a house, I am not given 28 days to correct that and give back the television I have taken to avoid being prosecuted. What we are doing here is basically allowing a landlord to rob a renter of rent he or she cannot afford to pay and be allowed a month to correct that. How does that make sense? We are creating a scenario whereby there is an offence but somebody as privileged as a landlord gets 28 days to undo the offence he or she has just committed . I do not understand that. We are creating carve-outs for certain types of people when we would not do so for other crimes that end up in the courts. If somebody has broken the law, why are we removing the offence? Why would that 28-day period be carved out for landlords to be effectively allowed to break the law?

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Retrieved: 2026-08-27T06:52:15+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-07-14