Rent a room agreement Ireland: a licence, not a tenancy

If you let a room in the home you live in, the occupier is a licensee, not a tenant. Section 3(2)(g) of the Residential Tenancies Act 2004 provides that the Act does not apply to "a dwelling within which the landlord also resides". The exclusion is total: the whole statute falls away, not merely parts of it. That is the entire legal basis of a rent-a-room arrangement, and it holds only while you actually live there.

What the exclusion removes

• No Part 4 tenancy. Section 28 never engages, however long the licensee stays. Six months, six years — there is no security of tenure to acquire.
• No RTB registration. The arrangement is not registrable under section 134, so the one-month deadline and the section 144 offence simply do not apply to you.
• No deposit cap. The section 19B limits on the deposit and on advance payments are inapplicable. A deposit larger than one month's fee is lawful here — though it is still money you must be able to account for.
• No statutory notice periods. The Table to section 66 does not reach a licence. Whatever notice you agree in the document is the notice period, and it binds both of you.
• No RTB dispute route. Part 6 goes with the rest of the Act. Neither party may refer a dispute to the Board.

The last one cuts both ways

Landlords tend to read the list above as a set of freedoms. Four of the five are. The fifth is not.

Losing Part 6 means losing the cheap forum. If the licensee stops paying, you have no Board to refer the matter to: a disagreement about the fee, the deposit or the ending of the arrangement is an ordinary contract matter for the District Court. That is the price of being able to end the arrangement on the agreed notice rather than on 152 days'.

It also means the written agreement carries far more weight than a tenancy agreement does. In a tenancy the Act supplies the terms the parties forgot. In a licence, nothing does. Whatever is not written down is not agreed.

The trap: self-contained accommodation

The exclusion turns on residing within the dwelling. A converted granny flat, a basement conversion or a garden room with its own front door, kitchen and bathroom is a separate dwelling — you reside next to it, not within it. Section 3(2)(g) does not apply, the occupier is a tenant, and the full apparatus arrives: a Part 4 tenancy of unlimited duration after six months under section 28, RTB registration within one month under section 134, the section 19B deposit cap, the section 66 notice periods and the Part 6 dispute route.

Calling the document a licence changes none of that. Neither does calling the payment a licence fee. The test is the arrangement on the ground.

Two things keep you on the right side of it in a genuine shared-home letting:

1. Keep the shared living genuinely shared. A kitchen or bathroom used in common with you is the fact that does the work.
2. Keep your own access to the room for cleaning, inspection, repair and emergencies. The licensee should not have exclusive possession of a defined space.

A long minimum period is worth thinking about too. The exclusion does not depend on the length of the arrangement, so a six- or twelve-month minimum does not by itself create a tenancy — but exclusive occupation of a defined space, for a defined term, at a rent is the classic description of one, and the RTB or a court will look at substance rather than the label.

What the document should cover

The room, the shared areas, the licence fee and how utilities are split, the deposit and when it comes back, the agreed notice period on both sides, any minimum period, house rules on guests, smoking and pets — and the tax position. Rent-a-room relief exempts up to €14,000 of gross income a year from letting a room in your own home, but exceeding that by one euro makes the whole amount taxable: see the €14,000 rent a room relief limit.

Note that the Revenue relief and the section 3(2)(g) exclusion are separate questions. Relief can still be available for a self-contained part of the home even where the letting is, in law, a tenancy.

Get the right document

Our licence agreement is written for an owner-occupier letting a room in the home they live in: the section 3(2)(g) basis stated on its face, the room and shared areas, fee, utilities, deposit, house rules, the agreed notice and the rent-a-room tax clause — with checks that stop you at checkout if you do not live in the property, or if the accommodation is self-contained.

→ Room Licence Agreement (Rent a Room)

If either of those is true, you need the other document: Residential Tenancy Agreement, and you should read what it must contain.