The High Court has ruled that revised rents under a long lease of a Dublin mews property were payable from the relevant review periods, including arrears, despite the later release of an independent valuer’s determinations.
Mr Justice Oisín Quinn delivered judgment on 13 February 2025 in a dispute over the meaning of the lease’s rent review provisions. The plaintiff, a receiver appointed over the tenant’s interest, argued that increased rent was payable only from 1 July 2021, the next rent payment date after the valuations were released. The defendants, who are executors of the former landlord’s estate, argued that arrears were due.
The 99-year lease was made in 1995 between the late Renée ffrench-O’Carroll and her son, Arthur ffrench-O’Carroll. It covered a two-storey mews at 5A and 5B Pembroke Lane, at the rear of 55 Fitzwilliam Square. The lease provided for a nominal initial rent and an increase to full open-market rent for the first floor if the tenant stopped managing the landlord’s other properties. The parties agreed that those services ended on 30 June 1998.
An independent valuer assessed annual rents of €14,000 for the five-year period from 1 July 2013 and €18,500 for the period from 1 July 2018. The determinations were dated 15 January 2021 and released to the parties in April 2021. Both sides accepted the valuations, but disputed when the revised rent became payable.
The judge found that the lease’s main rent obligation required open-market rent to take effect from the date the management services ceased. He treated the rent review schedule as machinery for agreeing or determining the amount, rather than as a provision that displaced that obligation. He concluded that the next payment after the valuations were ascertained had to include any arrears due.
The court directed that the payment include arrears from 10 March 2014 under the first determination and from 1 July 2018 under the second. By agreement, two-thirds of the original IR£1,000 rent was to be apportioned to the ground floor, for which there was no rent increase.
The judgment did not set the precise amount payable or decide whether interest or costs were due. The judge said he would hear from the parties on those matters.