The Residential Tenancies Board was pleased to participate in The Housing Agency Practitioners Conference in Athlone on 10th and 11th April. The conference brought together practitioners from across the housing sector to address the theme of ‘Momentum in Housing: Partnerships for Progress.’
The RTB’s Director Rosemary Steen took part in a panel discussion on the topic of ‘State Agencies: Supporting the Sector.’ In her remarks, Ms Steen described how collaboration with partners across the housing sector was central to achieving her core priorities during her first seven months as Director of the RTB. Ms Steen said:
“A rental sector can only work for everyone when rental law is taken seriously and respected, and when people have access to efficient services. When I joined the RTB seven months ago, I initially outlined three big priorities. And I am very grateful to many of our stakeholders here today who have worked with us to successfully deliver on these.”
Ms Steen described how support from the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage enabled the RTB to hire eight additional staff and to roll out a disputes improvement programme in 2024. This enabled the RTB to reduce dispute resolution timelines to seven weeks for mediation cases in 2024. She also called on partners at the event to use the RTB’s mediation service as it offers the quickest option to resolve tenancy disputes.
She highlighted how digital innovation will allow the RTB to make dispute services even more efficient in 2025, when the RTB launches a new dispute resolution portal. She noted that the RTB hopes to ask partners in Approved Housing Bodies to support final testing of this new platform in May.
Ms Steen also thanked local authorities attending the event for their collaboration on the RTB’s recent registration compliance campaign targeting counties with the highest levels of unregistered tenancies.
In February, the RTB delivered a public information campaign with support from county councils in Louth, Monaghan, Cavan, Donegal, Galway, Clare and Tipperary to ensure that every tenancy that should be registered with the RTB is registered. She repeated her call for local authorities to contact the RTB and to share information that can help to identify and pursue unregistered tenancies throughout the country.