Robert Troy won't say why rental tenancy was not registered with RTB
State Tenancy Minister Has Months Which His Nine Residence, Confirm Former At Began To Was A Primary Troy Ago, Of Registered Rental Collins When Robert Declined Picture:
Minister of State Robert Troy has declined to confirm when a rental tenancy at his former primary residence, which began nine months ago, was registered.
The property, on the site of the Ballynacarrigy Post Office, has been rented since last November, according to a statement made by Mr Troy on Thursday and confirmed by the tenant on Friday.
It is a legal requirement for all rentals to be registered with the Residential Tenancies Board. An online search for the property was displaying no returns on Friday evening and sources within the RTB confirmed that at that point the property had not yet been registered on the board's system.
A spokesperson for the board told the that the online register of tenancies is the official register of all tenancies registered with the RTB.
Mr Troy had not responded when contacted earlier on Friday to ask why the property was not being returned by way of an online search of the register. When advised that confirmation had been received that the rental was not apparently registered, Mr Troy replied with an RTB number with the prefix ‘RT-0822’ which he said represented the registration number for the post office property.
Asked if the property had been registered in August, 2022, Mr Troy did not respond. As of Friday evening, the RTB register was still not returning any results for the post office rental.
Separately, a property Mr Troy has declared as providing him with rental income at Cathedral Street in Mullingar appeared within the RTB register overnight on Friday.
Mr Troy had not responded to questions on Thursday as to why the Cathedral View property did not appear to be registered with the RTB. On Friday, a search for the same eircode as used on Thursday returned four results, where previously none had been found.
The visited the property and discovered it has been vacant for a number of months.
Mr Troy did not reply on Friday evening when asked for a copy of the equivalent registration number for Cathedral View that he had already provided for the Ballynacarrigy property.
The Minister has declared the Cathedral View rental property on an annual basis on his Dail register of interests since he became a TD in 2011.
A spokesperson for the RTB said that the tenancies register is updated weekly on a Sunday. When asked why the register had apparently updated for the Cathedral View property overnight on Friday, the spokesperson said “at no other point during the week is it updated”.
In a statement on Thursday acknowledging at least seven errors on his statutory declarations, Mr Troy further noted that while he has declared his 50% ownership of the Cathedral View property, he is not registered as its co-owner on the Land Registry.
“That is clearly an error, and I will take the necessary steps now to have this corrected,” Mr Troy said.
The full registered owner of that property is local Shane Nohilly. Contacted for comment on Thursday, Mr Nohilly acknowledged that he and Mr Troy had bought the Cathedral View property “years ago as an investment property”, and that they hold a joint mortgage on it.
Mr Nohilly told the he “presumed” it was rented out and that he thought it had been registered with the RTB.