Failure to register Dublin rental property was an oversight – Stephen Donnelly

Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly has said that not renewing his Dublin rental property in 2019 is the only mistake he has made in his property declarations “to the best of my knowledge”.

Mr Donnelly also said he will not consider his ministerial position after his Fianna Fail colleague Robert Troy resigned as a junior minister last week when he admitted to several errors in declaring his property interests.

Mr Donnelly has said he failed to register a rental property in Sandyford with the Residential Tenancies Board (RTB) in 2019, though it was registered in 2011 and renewed in 2015, and is currently registered.

He said he discovered the property was not registered with the RTB after details of Mr Troy’s property errors emerged.

It is an offence to fail to register a tenancy with the RTB within one month of the tenancy commencing.

Speaking at Dublin Castle on Thursday, Mr Donnelly said it should not have happened but it was due to an “oversight”, and there was no advantage to not registering the property with the RTB.

He said: “It should have been renewed in 2019. That’s my fault. There was an oversight. The responsibility is mine.

“It’s a long-standing tenancy. It was registered in 2011, then it was renewed in 2015.

“It shouldn’t have happened and I rectified it as soon as I discovered it.

“Under the old laws, an existing tenancy needs to be renewed every four years.

“So 2015, then 2019 and then 2023 and I missed it (in 2019) and I accept that as a mistake and it shouldn’t have happened and I fully hold my hands up on it.

“I thought it was all in order. I checked the Dail register of members’ interests, both properties have been fully declared every year on that.

“But I also double-checked the RTB and yeah that’s when I saw it.

“As soon as I discovered it, we contacted the RTB, they said to backdate it online and that was done and that is the same process that anybody has to go through who missed a renewal.”

Mr Donnelly said he paid a fine of “approximately 100 euro” for the late registration with the RTB.

He added he is not considering his position.

“I’m not considering the position (of minister) but as I said, it shouldn’t have happened, but it is my responsibility,” he said.

The Wicklow TD also defended his decision to lobby in the Dail for better tax treatment for accidental landlords before he became a minister.

Mr Donnelly described himself as an accidental landlord in relation to the property that was not renewed with the RTB.

“It is a case of we bought a property and went into negative equity and that was the case,” Mr Donnelly added.

“The previous position that I was making, which I think it’s still relevant today, is we need people able to rent places, and we had a situation whereby Irish citizens who had a property, maybe they had it for their pension or maybe they had it through negative equity, were being taxed at about 50% of the rental income, but corporate investors were paying a tiny fraction of that.

“I didn’t believe that was the policy. I still don’t.”

Taoiseach Micheal Martin said Mr Donnelly’s failure to renew his Dublin property was a “genuine oversight”.

Mr Martin also said there should be a “sense of perspective” in how the error is judged.

“First of all, I think he has explained this oversight,” Mr Martin said on Thursday.

“It should have been registered with the RTB, but it had been registered previously and it has been declared, so seems to me on the face of it to be a genuine oversight and accepted the minister’s explanation for that.

“Others also in other parties have had similar oversights last week, with a Sinn Fein TD, for example, who hadn’t a particular property registered either, and that can happen.

“I think we have to have a sense of perspective then in how we assess and judge situations like this.”

Mr Donnelly has previously proposed and advocated for changes to finance bills in the Dail seeking better tax treatment for accidental landlords, but did not make it clear he gained to benefit from such proposed changes.

It is required under the Ethics in Public Office Act that a TD must make a declaration and state their material interest in a subject matter before the Dail.

When asked whether he believes Mr Donnelly should have declared this interest to the Dail, Mr Martin said it was done so through the Dail register of members’ interests.

Mr Martin added: “I don’t have the context of that particular debate or indeed haven’t seen the content of the contribution.

“I think, generally speaking, if people are contributing to Dail Eireann and they have a particular interest, they should declare that interest, although it has been declared on the register of interests.

“That’s the important point and so it’s not that he hadn’t declared it, he had publicly. But, again, we have to look at the context in which that debate took place.

“There can be very genuine motivations as well, when people bring forward proposals and amendments to legislation. I think that has to be accepted as well.”

Mr Martin added: “Compliance is not about over-penalising in terms of errors or whatever, there’s late fees and so on.

“There are various mechanisms laid out in the legislation, irrespective of who it applies to.

“But compliance is multi-faceted and it doesn’t mean that on the first occasion when someone does not comply that you go to the nuclear option in respect to punishing that person. In all compliance systems there’s a graduated approach and that applies to everything across the board.”