The Private Residential Tenancies Board really needs to get its act together to better serve the public, writes JACK FAGAN

THE RAPID growth of the private rental market over the past 20 years is often forgotten when statistics are published showing how quickly the overall number of housing completions rose through the boom years. Those more familiar with the construction industry know only too well how much the buy-to-let rental sector was central to a once vibrant industry which lost its way and eventually crashed.

Though the overall issues for developers of unsold stock and excessive borrowing for overvalued sites could take years to resolve, Government agencies and the Revenue Commissioners have managed to drag the private rental industry away from the chaos and into the 21st century.

Under the old local authorities’ registration system, no more than 30,000 tenancies were ever registered. Today that figure has reached around 220,000 – largely because the Revenue decided to disallow mortgage interest relief to owners who neglected to register their rental properties with the Private Residential Tenancies Board (PRTB). It was an inspired move which will obviously bring more investors into the tax net.

The new registration conditions have meant that the PRTB has been struggling to cope with the level of registration applications which at one stage was running at 1,000 per day. The registration process is taking a frustrating 12 weeks to complete, something that could be readily avoided if the board had the sense to introduce a simple change in the ground rules which would oblige landlords to register their properties, say, every three years rather than having to register every single change in tenancy.

The bedlam associated with registering tenancies has been made more difficult because staff are frequently uncooperative in identifying the names of the last registered tenants for the purposes of clarification. So much for the transparency we might expect from our public servants! With staff seemingly unwilling to show a little courtesy or simply overstepping the mark, it is hardly surprising that 30 per cent of the registration applications are either incomplete or inaccurate and end up being returned to the landlords.

The PRTB might also take a lesson from the Revenue, which managed to bring in a whopping €57.4 million last year from owners of second homes. The Revenue set owners the task of registering and paying online. It worked like a dream. Ten years after it was set up the PRTB is finally getting around to having its own system of registering online. The move, due in the next few months, is long overdue.

For the record, it ashould be noted that the board’s real success has been in offering an alternative forum to the courts for resolving disputes between landlords and tenants. Although less than 1 per cent of registered tenancies end up in dispute, there has been a marked increase in the number of cases in the past two years, largely because of the more difficult conditions in the rental market generally.

Not surprisingly, the issue of landlords retaining deposits now accounts for most disputes handled by the board. With 1,646 disputes registered in 2008, it obviously takes quite a considerable amount of time to deal with all of them – in most cases from eight to 12 months. The real casualties in the long drawn out delays are landlords whose tenants are over-holding properties and refusing to pay the rents in the meantime.These cases should clearly be fast-tracked to the dispute tribunal because, with the build up of outstanding rent, many tenants end up unable to pay their debts when the issue is finally adjudicated on.

There is also unease that none of the professional bodies associated with the property industry (Irish Auctioneers and Valuers Institute, the Institute of Professional Auctioneers and Valuers, and the Irish Home Builders Association) are represented on the newly appointed board of the PRTB. The sole representative of the industry is the Irish Property Owners Association. It is doubtful if they speak for even 1 per cent of landlords.