The High Court has dismissed a tenant’s appeal against a Private Residential Tenancies Board (PRTB) determination requiring him to pay €40,098.63 in rent arrears. Ms Justice Baker held that the arrears issue was properly before the Tribunal and that it did not err in finding the receiver entitled to collect rent.
Michael Doyle brought the statutory appeal on points of law under section 123(3) of the Residential Tenancies Act 2004–2009. He challenged the PRTB’s determination of 5 June 2014, which found a notice of termination invalid but ordered payment of the arrears within 28 days. The court’s judgment, delivered on 10 November 2015, concluded that the appeal failed.
Doyle argued that the dispute referred to the PRTB concerned only the validity of the termination notice, so the Tribunal had no basis to order payment of rent arrears. The court rejected that argument. It found the landlord had sought arrears at the first adjudication, the Tribunal’s appeal materials identified rent arrears as an issue, and Doyle’s own appeal challenged the amount claimed. The court said the statutory process allowed the Tribunal to identify and consider relevant issues, provided fair procedures were followed. Doyle did not claim that the arrears issue had taken him by surprise or that he had been denied an opportunity to address the figures.
The court also rejected Doyle’s challenge to the receiver’s entitlement to collect rent. The receiver had been appointed over assets of Cheval Construction Ltd, which the court said owned the lessor’s interest in the tenancy. The judgment noted that Doyle had engaged with the receiver over the rent and had obtained acceptance of an agreed reduction to €3,000 a month. The court found ample evidence before the Tribunal to support its decision that rent was payable to the receiver.
A further argument—that the tenancy’s registration details did not identify the company as landlord—was not raised before the adjudicator or Tribunal. The court said its statutory appeal was not a rehearing and it could consider only alleged errors of law determined by the deciding body. It therefore did not decide whether the registration details were legally sufficient. The judgment also left open whether the tenancy had become a new or different tenancy.
The final order was that the appeal failed. The court did not set aside or vary the PRTB determination.