An approved housing body has been ordered to pay €750 to a tenant due to “inaction” over allegations of anti-Traveller slurs by a neighbour and allegedly being spat at.
The Residential Tenancies Board (RTB) made the instruction following a tribunal hearing last November involving the North and East Housing Association and a property in Co Laois.
The tenant told the tribunal he was a member of the Traveller community and that the neighbour made “derogatory remarks” about the community, while the landlord was “letting him away with this”. The neighbour did not attend the hearing.
The tenant said he moved into the dwelling in December 2020 and all was well until September 2022. The tenant claimed the neighbour had spat at him. He also said the neighbour had told him that “he does not want to live beside a halting site, or beside a kn***er or ti**er”.
The tenant said he was “a very good tenant” and had kept his front and back garden in good condition.
The tenant claimed the neighbour had broken “two or three flower pots” from his garden wall. He also said that his wife was an extremely vulnerable person, having suffered a stroke.
The tenant claimed the landlord, which is the approved housing body, did not want to talk or deal with him “because he is a Traveller”.
The tenant said ideally he would like the neighbour to be evicted but knew this was not going to happen.
“All he wants is to live a quiet life and to look after his sick wife,” the tribunal was told.
A housing officer with the approved housing body told the tribunal “he categorically denied” that he treated any of the residents differently because of their ethnicity.
He said it was a “long-standing dispute between two neighbours” and originally he thought it was just a “tit for tat between neighbours”. However, he accepted that the situation had escalated in 2023.
The RTB found that the landlord was in breach of its obligations requiring it to allow the tenant to “enjoy peaceful occupation of the dwelling” and ordered it to pay damages of €750.
The tribunal said it accepted that the tenant had complained about “persistent harassment” from the neighbour to the landlord for a long period of time and “as a result of the inaction of the landlord, the landlord did not afford the tenant peaceful and exclusive occupation of the dwelling”.
“The tribunal accepts that the tenant has suffered great distress,” it said, adding should the tenant accept a transfer “he will suffer further inconvenience and stress as a direct result of the inactions of the landlord.”
In another case, a landlord said he was concerned about the fabric of his Dublin property where the electricity had been cut off for nine months and there was no heating or light as a result.
The tribunal was told by Barry Keegan, landlord of the property along with Adelle Purcell, that for more than three months the blinds at the property had been down all the time, and windows were not open even on hot days.
However, the tenant, Moses O’Wilserhun, said he was still living in the property, that he worked nights as a taxi driver, and did not get up until 3pm or 4pm in the afternoon.
The case involved a property at Hunters Wood, Dublin 24, which was leased to two occupants in September 2016, one of whom had subsequently left, with Mr O’Wilserhun moving in in September 2023 with the landlords initially unaware. He was the only tenant in the building by the time of the tribunal hearing in December last. The rent was €1,550 per month and there were arrears of €12,348 at the time of the hearing.
The electricity was cut off in March 2023 due to approximately €12,000 being owed to the ESB and the tenants had been warned by the landlords of a breach of their obligations, the tribunal heard. A notice of termination was issued in April of last year.
Mr O’Wilserhun said he had moved into the property with an existing tenant, Irene, to whom he paid his share of the rent and half the electricity. He said when the electricity was cut off he contacted the landlord as he could not contact Irene. He said he intended to move out but had not found alternative accommodation.
The tribunal ruled that Mr O’Wilserhun should quit the property within 21 days, pay all the rent arrears, and €500 damages for the breach of tenant’s obligations. It said each tenant in a joint tenancy is responsible for the rent and, if one tenant fails to pay, the landlord can seek all the rent from the other tenant and tenants.
- Sign up for push alerts and have the best news, analysis and comment delivered directly to your phone
- Join The Irish Times on WhatsApp and stay up to date
- Listen to our Inside Politics podcast for the best political chat and analysis
