Court actions against landlord refusing to return deposits

By Dara Bradley

The Private Residential Tenancies Board (PRTB) has spent up to €10,000 in mediation and court proceedings to try to get an unscrupulous Galway landlord to return deposits he owes to four tenants.

Housing organisation Threshold claims that a Galway landlord routinely withholds deposits from his tenants and has continued to ignore determination orders issued against him by PRTB. The male landlord owns just two properties in Galway but owes €8,000 to four of his former tenants because he unjustly withheld their deposits when they left the accommodation.

The “serial offending” landlord is facing four different legal actions from the PRTB for failing to comply with determination orders which ordered him to return the deposits to his tenants.

Deirdre Murphy, Coordinator of the Galway branch of Threshold said unjustified deposit retention by landlords is on the increase in Galway but this landlord is involved in the worst case of unjustified deposit retention seen locally. It has cost the PRTB at least €10,000 to date to pursue this particular landlord, she said.

Ms Murphy says the withholding of deposits by landlords is one of the causes that could lead to a tenant becoming homeless. According to Threshold’s annual report 2009, the Galway bra

nch dealt with 5,265 housing queries last year and the highest category of query was deposit retention, while the second highest related to rent allowance. The majority of the queries were ‘one-offs’ and between 1,500 and 1,700 clients are ‘regulars’.

A higher proportion of people renting in Galway are dependent on social welfare incomes and in receipt of rent supplement payments than elsewhere in Ireland. Last year, 37% of Threshold’s clients nationally were dependent on social welfare, but in Galway this figure rose to 48%.

“Many landlords think that the deposit money is theirs, not the tenants. During the recession, there has been an increase in the number of landlords in Galway who are not giving back the deposit – they have spent it or can’t afford to give it back. They don’t think of it as tenants’ money they think of it as their own, which or course it is not,” she said.