RTB Opening Statement to Joint Oireachtas Committee
Residential Tenancies Board Opening Statement to Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage
Tuesday, 28 April 2026
Thank you, Chairperson and Members, for the invitation to attend this afternoon.
My name is Rosemary Steen, and I am Director of the Residential Tenancies Board. I am accompanied by my colleagues Louise Loughlin, Deputy Director, Brian Gallwey, Senior Research and Policy Manager and Sinéad Murphy, Head of Communications and Engagement. We will be happy to address Members’ questions, but first I would like to make a short opening statement and respond to the matter set out in your letter of invitation.
RTB role and remit
The Residential Tenancies Board (RTB) is an independent public body that regulates Ireland’s rental sector. We regulate all private, Approved Housing Body, cost rental and student-specific accommodation tenancies in Ireland.
We work to deliver a fair rental system for everyone in Ireland. In our role:
• We inform tenants and landlords about their rights and responsibilities
• We ensure landlords register tenancies and follow rental law
• We help to resolve tenancy disputes
• We provide trusted data and insights to inform rental sector policy
The RTB does not have a role in the development or delivery of student‑specific accommodation (SSA). Our remit relates to regulation, compliance and data.
Student renting arrangements
Students live in a variety of rental arrangements, including purpose‑built student‑specific accommodation, standard private residential tenancies, and “digs” or rent‑a‑room arrangements.
While student‑specific accommodation and private residential tenancies fall within the RTB’s remit, digs arrangements do not. Where a student lives with the property owner in their principal residence, the arrangement is a licence. It is not registered with the RTB, and is not covered by the Residential Tenancies Act.
Student‑specific accommodation registrations
All student‑specific accommodation must be registered annually with the RTB. To be classified as student‑specific accommodation, a property must be used exclusively for student accommodation during the academic term. Renting a private residential property to a student does not make the tenancy SSA.
At the end of Q4 2025, 39,720 student‑specific accommodation tenancies and licences were registered with the RTB, an increase of 8.7% from 36,521 at the end of 2024. Registrations are concentrated in urban centres close to higher education institutions, including Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Galway City and Sligo. The RTB figures count tenancies rather than bedspaces.
Many students also live in standard private residential tenancies, which must be registered annually. The RTB does not collect data on whether tenants in private tenancies are students at point of registration. The RTB Rental Sector Survey however suggests that 5% of tenants were in higher education in 2022/23 when the survey was last conducted. It will be repeated again in 2026.
Differences in rental law for SSA
Tenants in student‑specific accommodation have most of the same rights and protections as tenants in the private rental sector. However, there are differences, including in relation to the permitted length of tenancy or licence arrangements and rules governing the ending of tenancies.
Rent setting and national rent control rules
Since 1 March 2026, new national rent control rules apply to all private tenancies and student specific accommodation. Under these rules, there are specific provisions for SSA:
• For most SSA tenancies, rent may be increased once per year by 2% or the rate of inflation, whichever is lower. Inflation is measured by the Consumer Price Index (CPI).
• Rent may be reset to market levels once every three years.
• Rent cannot be reset to market levels before 1 March 2029, or outside the three‑year cycle.
There is an important exception for new SSA developments where construction commenced on or after 10 June 2025. For these properties, the 2% cap does not apply and rent may be increased annually in line with CPI, even where this exceeds 2%.
Driving compliance with rental law
Informing tenants and landlords of their rights and responsibilities, and driving compliance with rental law, are core aspects of the RTB’s work.
Each year, the RTB runs a student renting information campaign at the start of the academic year. In 2025, the campaign achieved 44,000 visits to an information page created for landlords and students. This was an increase of 83% on 2024.
The campaign provided a suite of student and landlord information resources, including leaflets and videos. Student information leaflets were translated into Portuguese, Spanish and Chinese and distributed through a digital toolkit shared with Student Unions and university support services.
The RTB continues to actively investigate and sanction breaches of rental law by student‑specific accommodation providers. To date, the RTB has published three sanctions involving 54 SSA tenancies, with a combined value of €23,500.
We currently have nine further investigations underway into SSA providers, primarily relating to alleged breaches of rules on advance rent and deposits. Four of these cases are awaiting Circuit Court confirmation. Subject to court outcomes we expect to publish further significant sanctions later in 2026 in these cases which involve more than 220 tenancies.
Plans to enhance SSA data and support compliance in 2026/27
Following legislative changes from 1 March 2026 and the publication of the National Student‑Specific Accommodation Strategy, the RTB is progressing several initiatives for the 2026/27 academic year. These include:
• Enhancements to SSA registration to capture additional rent‑setting information
• Planning for a new digital SSA registration solution
• A webinar for SSA providers on 12th May on registration changes for the 2026/27 academic year and on SSA compliance obligations
• Establishing data‑sharing arrangements with the Higher Education Authority to support identification of unregistered SSA tenancies
The RTB will also be engaging with the Departments of Housing, Local Government and Heritage and of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science on objectives in the strategy. These include enhancing data availability and research on the impact of new SSA developments on local rental markets. The enhancements to SSA registration processes currently underway are essential to delivery of these objectives.
While the RTB does not have a role in the delivery of SSA, the RTB is committed to working with both Departments to deliver research, data and insights to support policy making and delivery. As always, the RTB remains committed to upholding rental law, driving compliance and supporting a fair rental sector.
Thank you again for the opportunity to address the Committee. We look forward to Members’ questions.
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Main photo: Leinster House by Jean Housen, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons, cropped