The High Court has ordered enforcement of a Residential Tenancies Board determination requiring Mary Duniyva to leave a Rathmines flat and pay rent arrears, after finding that she had not established any of the limited grounds for refusing enforcement.
Ms Justice Tara Burns delivered the judgment on 31 July 2018 in an appeal from a Dublin Circuit Court order. The High Court hearing was de novo, meaning it was not bound by the Circuit Court’s findings. The order followed an application under section 124 of the Residential Tenancies Act 2004.
The Board’s determination, issued on 12 April 2017, required Ms Duniyva and anyone else living in Flat 4, Grosvenor Square, Rathmines, to give up possession to the landlords, Barbara and Patrick Gibson. It also required payment of rent outstanding from 27 March 2017 at €500 a month, or €16.44 a day for part of a month, plus specified tenancy charges, until the flat was vacated. The Circuit Court granted the Board’s enforcement application on 8 February 2018.
The tenancy began in November 2010. The landlords served a termination notice in November 2016, saying they required the flat for their grandson, Ciaran Gibson, for nine months. Ms Duniyva challenged the notice before the Board. An adjudicator and then the Tenancy Tribunal found it valid. Her separate appeal on points of law was rejected by the High Court in October 2017.
In the enforcement appeal, Ms Duniyva argued that the Tribunal had acted unfairly, overlooked material matters, misapplied the law and reached a manifestly erroneous decision on the evidence. Justice Burns rejected those grounds. She said the available Tribunal report showed that the grandson gave evidence in Ms Duniyva’s case and that she had asked him questions. Her more specific claim that she was stopped from asking about the proposed nine-month stay was not set out in her affidavits, so the judge did not accept her submissions as evidence.
The judge also found that the Tribunal had been aware of the stated nine-month period and that no discrepancy with the grandson’s four-year course of study had been established. The earlier High Court ruling on the legal test for a landlord’s family-occupation requirement was considered, and no manifest legal error was shown.
Ms Duniyva argued that the notice was now spent because the stated occupation period had passed. Justice Burns said she had no jurisdiction to decide that issue in this section 124 application. Her task was limited to whether enforcement should be refused on the statutory grounds. Finding none established, she ordered enforcement in the terms sought in the Board’s motion.