The Institute of Professional Auctioneers and Valuers is demanding that incentives for private landlords be included in the legislation on tenancies to be introduced by housing minister Eoghan Murphy.

IPAV president Ellah Dunphy (pictured) says that a "scourge of irresponsible tenants" is causing a "haemorrhage of private landlords" from the rental market, and has demanded a code of conduct for tenants which incorporates real consequences for bad behaviour.

Dunphy told an IPAV conference: “Where tenants behave badly a landlord can go through the Residential Tenancies Board process, get a determination in his or her favour and end up with nothing for the considerable time and effort spent. In my experience landlords in such situations often decide not to bother pursuing cases."

With the plethora of regulation introduced in recent years the landlord-tenant relationship has become unbalanced, she claimed.

“The other side of rights is responsibilities, and it is the ‘responsibilities’ bit that is lacking. A fairer balance is needed. There needs to be recompense, real recompense, when tenants behave badly,” Dunphy added.

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She said there are landlords who behave irresponsibly too. “And where they do they deserve to face the full rigours of the law. What I’m saying is genuine landlords need better support than they have currently when tenants behave badly. A code of conduct for tenants, a code with real consequences for bad behaviour, is essential,” she said.

According to the RTB 2017 annual report, there were 174,000 landlords registered in 2017 compared with 175,250 in 2016. The number of private registered tenancies declined from 319,800 in 2016 to 313,000 in 2017,

Dunphy predicted that the lack of “any meaningful tax incentives” in the Budget 2019 would result in more private landlords exiting the market.