Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

One of the useful things that could come out of this entire exercise, because it is important, not so much in the sense that the CSO had to do all of this hard work and then come in here to answer our questions but rather that something arises from it, is that it shows there is an argument to take a look at the question in future censuses on private rental arrangements so that, rather than just asking whether people are renting in the private rental sector, they would be given some options to say, for example, whether they are renting a whole property, sharing with other renters or renting a room in the owner's property. The reason this is important from a housing policy point of view is that, for us to understand what is going on in the private rental sector, we need the best data we have. We have had big policy debates and there has been Government policy and legislative decisions on foot of an understanding of quite a significant shrinkage of the private rental sector, looking at RTB registrations, even though we know those registrations are not the definitive data. If we were able to find a way of getting more granular census data in future years, it could be really interesting. In a sense, this is the best effort that can be made with the datasets the CSO has. Our questions are not critical but what they show is that it is very difficult for the CSO, with the information it has, to definitively read these things. It is useful to know that because it means we can move on it. It would be very interesting to look at how the private rental sector question is asked.

With respect to the RTB, I really welcome the indication in the director's opening statement that there will be an equal focus on informal tenancies. While there is clearly a chunk of properties that are possibly informal that would not have to register with the RTB, it is reasonable to say there are some in that category that may have to. We do not know the size of that and that is crucial. In the RTB's annual report, on pages 79 and 80, there is a list of referrals for potential non-compliance, in table 3, and, separately, in table 4, information on the number of issued registration enforcement notice letters. I am interested to know something, if not today then at any time, because the data may not be collated. If we look at the top row of the table on enforcement actions for registration, we see there were approximately 4,500 and 6,000 in 2018 and 2019, respectively. The numbers go down in 2020 and 2021, during the Covid period, but start to move again in 2022.

Obviously, there are the first and second notices, a warning letter and a solicitor's letter. I would be really interested to know how many of the people in the original category who got the original letter ended up being registered. We could look at that table and say it is a lot of activity, but the real test is what number of those then registered. If that data was available, that would be really interesting. If not, it might be worthwhile putting it into the reporting because it would then show if the RTB was doing a good things and that enforcement is leading to greater registration. That is a positive. I would be interested to hear the witnesses' thoughts on that.