Consultation Paper on the General Law of the Landlord and Tenant

how far the Irish courts will follow these developments, but attentionshould be drawn to the provisions in section 15 of the ResidentialTenancies Bill 2003.6.10 Section 15 provides that a landlord of a dwelling “owes toeach person who could be potentially affected a duty to enforce theobligations of the tenant under the tenancy.” 33 The category of “aperson who could be potentially affected” is defined as meaning “aperson who, it is reasonably foreseeable, would be directly andadversely affected by a failure to enforce an obligation of the tenantwere such a failure to occur.” 34 What is interesting about thisprovision is that in many of the English cases referred to in theprevious paragraph, the alleged “management” failure by the landlordwas that one tenant in the multi-let property was adversely affected bythe landlord’s failure to enforce against other tenants in the sameproperty common covenants to which all the tenants were subject. 35This raises the question of whether the duty under section 15 36 shouldbe extended to properties other than dwellings. The Commission’sinclination is to leave the law on this subject to develop in the contextof non-residential property. It notes that the 2003 Bill contemplatesthat disputes concerning a breach of the landlord’s statutory duty willbe remedied solely by making a complaint to the new PrivateResidential Tenancies Board to be established under the Bill whenenacted, 37 and that no person will have a right of action in court forbreach of the duty. 38 Such complaints are to be dealt with by a systemof dispute resolution. 3933343536373839Section 15(1). Note that this duty, and remedies to enforce it, do not affectany duty of care which exists apart from it: section 15(4).Section 15(2).Eg the Chartered Trust (footnote 29 above) and Nynehead Developments(footnote 32 above) cases.Note that it would appear that it is possible to contract out of it: section 18prohibits contracting out only in relation to sections 12 and 16.Under Part 8.Section 15(3).Under Part 6.99