As part of the School of Law and Criminology Research Seminar Series, Sarah Hamill will deliver at talk 'The Celtic Paper Tiger: Ireland's tenancies legislation and the chimera of tenants' rights'.
In recent years a number of jurisdictions have sought to reform their landlord and tenant laws to provide enhanced protections for tenants. Ireland was one such jurisdiction and it commenced its reforms relatively early, beginning in 2004. Since then, Ireland’s reforms have been both praised and echoed in other jurisdictions. Yet, Ireland’s Residential Tenancies Acts 2004 to 2024 are not so highly praised within Ireland itself. In this article, I offer a critical re-reading of these Acts and their efforts to rebalance the landlord-tenant relationship in Ireland. While it is true that the Acts appear to grant many rights to tenants, the Acts fail to see that these rights are adequately enforced or respected and fail to provide suitable punishment for those landlords who do not abide by the rules. I argue that there is scope to reform the Residential Tenancies Acts in a way which would both respect tenants’ housing rights and landlords’ property rights.
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