THE PRIVATE Residential Tenancies Board (PRTB) has been working hard and making a real difference for both landlords and tenants in the last five years.
So I was somewhat disappointed to note a number of factual inaccuracies and misleading claims in last week’s Property Investor article about our organisation.
The PRTB replaced the courts in dealing with the majority of landlord/tenant disputes in late 2004, not 10 years ago as stated in the article.
In that short time it has become a key body in the improved regulation of the private rented sector. Tenancy registrations now exceed 230,000 – due in no small part to the PRTB’s active enforcement regime which has seen us issue more than 13,000 enforcement notices to unregistered landlords.
Mr Fagan was critical of the service provided by the PRTB staff which I believe is unfair and misleading. The fact that the PRTB would not provide an Irish Times journalist with sensitive client information over the telephone is not evidence of a lack of courtesy or an absence of “the transparency we might expect from our public servants”.
Instead it demonstrates the duty of care to clients, and understanding of the relevant legislation, that is exercised by even our most junior staff in dealing with over 200 phonecalls from the public each day.
I fully accept that the time taken to process applications has been too long in the past, but the PRTB is committed to tackling this.
Indeed the PRTB has made good progress over the last year, reducing disputes processing times by a third.
Our staff numbers were increased to 40 in autumn 2008, and we are in the process of a complete overhaul of our ICT system. This will allow for online real-time tenancy registration and will free up staff resources to deal with handling disputes cases.
Additionally, the Minister for Housing and Local Services Michael Finneran has committed to reforming the legislation governing the PRTB to enable further significant reforms so that the PRTB can improve its services further.
The PRTB has made a very comprehensive submission to the Minister on the review. A key issue recognised by all is the need to address the issue of tenants remaining in situ while not paying the rent.
Unfortunately, some cases can be held up by landlords not being registered or not having served the necessary termination notices in accordance with the Act.
It should also be noted that 69 per cent of the PRTB’s cases are taken by tenants against landlords and over 43 per cent of all cases relate to deposit retention, where landlords are required to return all or part of the deposit in 76 per cent of cases.
It is evident, therefore, that if landlords returned deposits in a timely manner, it would free up PRTB resources to process cases (such as rent arrears) more quickly.
One final factual correction. Last week, the Non Principal Private Residences (NPPR) levy was lauded. The levy is collected not by Revenue, but by the local authorities. The PRTB played an important part in this scheme through our participation on the NPPR project board and through the ongoing use of our registrations database by the NPPR. The uptake of online payment also bodes well for the introduction of PRTB online registration facilities.
The PRTB recognises that much remains to be done to deliver on our ambitious targets as set out in our 2010-2012 strategic plan (c.f. www.prtb.ie) but I am confident that we are now well on the road to delivering on our commitments.
ANNE MARIE CAULFIELD
Director, Private Residential Tenancies Board (PRTB)
Planners often ignored
THE IRISH Planning Institute (IPI) would like to take issue with many of the contentions put forward by Isabel Morton in last week’s edition. For instance, the IPI does not agree that An Bord Pleanála granted too many planning permissions.
Many projects have been refused by the board for reasons such as inappropriate location or design and flood risk.
An Bord Pleanála is not responsible for the zoning of land. Neither are the planners.
The zoning of land is the sole function of the elected representatives who act on the advice of their planning departments while the planners must in turn conform to national planning guidelines, including residential density and apartment standards.
Overzoning was done contrary to the common good and frequently against the advice of planners.
It is also not true that An Bord Pleanála encouraged the construction of small apartments. The board, and indeed planning departments, have refused many projects for reasons of size or poor design.
This was despite criticism from the property industry stating that the apartment developments were needed.
The article suggests we might no longer need apartments but this would have serious implications for policies on densities and sustainability.
The institute supports the Minister in making amendments to the planning legislation that seek to reduce overzoning in inappropriate locations.
It may well be true that much of this has come too late but the IPI would point out that, as the national body representing professional planners, we have made submissions over many years proposing a greater compliance of local planning policies with regional and national policies, more restrictive policies on rural one-off housing, control of zoning on land at risk of flooding and a greater recognition of the need to prevent large speculative gains ending up in the pockets of landowners instead of the community.
The advice of planners has been ignored in the past. It is essential that professional planning advice be given adequate weight when critical decisions on our society’s future are being made.
GERRY SHEERAN
President, Irish Planning Institute
(IPI)
