Residents of Cork suburb claim compensation from landlord of antisocial tenants,
The Irish Examiner Tue, 11 Oct, 2022
https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/munster/arid-40981370.html
Cork residents seek compensation against landlord over alleged ‘criminal activity’ by tenants. The Eagle Valley Residents’ Association have taken a case on behalf of 188 households.
TheJournal.ie , Tue, 11 Oct, 2022
https://www.thejournal.ie/cork-residents-seek-compensation-landlord-alleged-criminal-activity-5890762-Oct2022/
Hundreds of Cork residents take case against landlord over claims he did not address behaviour of tenants ,
Evening Echo, Tue, 11 Oct, 2022
https://www.echolive.ie/corknews/arid-40981451.html
A group of residents under the umbrella of the Eagle Valley Residents Association took a case to the RTB against landlord Kevin O’Donovan for not terminating the tenancy of the tenant family after 10 years of complaints by neighbours over the anti social behaviour of the tenants and their visitors.
Following a hearing in June 2022, an Adjudicator for the RTB found in favour of the Residents’ Association that the family renting the property was involved in serious incidents of criminal and antisocial behaviour and that landlord Kevin O’Donovan had been in breach of his duties as a Landlord under the Residential Tenancies Act.
The Landlord appealed the decision in an RTB Tribunal hearing held on 11th October 2022.
Having invited further written submissions by both parties, the Tribunal is to issue a decision on jurisdiction and whether to grant a request for an in-person hearing.
This is the first time that a Residents Association has taken a case under the 2016 Amendment to the Residential Tenancies Act (Section 36). As is explained here
Neighbours and other third parties who could be affected by tenant activities (in particular, anti-social behaviour) were always owed a duty by the landlord to enforce his / her tenants’ obligations. A failure to enforce would allow that third party to bring a complaint to the RTB about the landlord’s failure to enforce. However, that complaint could only be brought by someone who was directly and adversely affected by the breach (ie, in the name of the third party and not, for example, in the name of the management company of an apartment block). This may have had a deterrent effect in circumstances where such a complaint would be copied to the tenants.
That situation has now been addressed by the commencement of Section 36 of the 2015 Act on 9 May 2016 which permits a complaint against a landlord for failing to enforce his / her tenants’ obligations to be referred to the RTB through, for example, a management company, a resident’s association or neighbourhood watch group. The above measures follow on from a number of recent reforms already made under the Act, which have been detailed on our website previously. There are still a large number of measures to be commenced, in particular the provisions relating to the deposit protection scheme which is to be operated / overseen by the RTB.
From 09/06/2016 <https://www.fieldfisher.com/en-ie/locations/ireland/ireland-blog/new-forms-new-formalities-amendments-rtb-introduced
We are not presently at liberty to discuss the case publicly due to the Sub Judice rule that the matter is under judicial consideration & is prohibited from public discussion until the RTB has issued its final determination order.
