The landlords of the former Crown Paints factory premises in Coolock have failed to get court orders requiring the paint company to pay market rent over four years before it vacated the site.
Crown Paints Ireland Ltd (CPI) leased the premises at Malahide Road, Coolock for 10 years from August 2008. When its lease expired in August 2018, it sought a new tenancy.
When the sides failed to agree the terms of a new tenancy, the landlords, members of the Howard family, issued a Landlord & Tenant Civil Bill in June 2019 asking the court to decide CPI’s entitlements. If the court found CPI was entitled to a new tenancy, the landlords asked the court to fix the term of the tenancy and the rent payable.
In a defence and counterclaim, CPI claimed it was entitled to a new tenancy and sought orders fixing the terms of that and the rent payable.
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In November 2022, CPI informed the landlords it was withdrawing its claim to a new tenancy and it vacated the premises at the end of 2022. It had continued to pay the rent payable under its original lease from August 2018 until it left the premises.
The landlords argued the rent paid from August 2018 until December 31st, 2022 was significantly less than the market rental value of the premises at the date of expiry of the lease.
In proceedings before Dublin Circuit Civil Court, they sought to have CPI pay the difference between the former lease rent and the market rent from August 2018 until CPI vacated the premises.
CPI argued it had a right to decide not to proceed to a new tenancy and could not be held liable for any difference between the old lease rent and the market rent.
In his recently published judgment, Judge John O’Connor accepted CPI remained in occupation of the premises after the lease expired in August 2018.
The landlords argued it would be unfair for the court not to find that CPI was liable to pay market rent from then until it left in late 2022, he noted.
There is nothing in the Landlord and Tenant (Amendment) Act 1980 obliging a tenant to take a term of less than five years or imply a tenancy when the tenant does not require it, he held.
There is no provision in the Act which obliges a tenant to take a retrospective expired lease for less than five years at a new market rent when the parties had both acknowledged they failed to agree the terms of a new tenancy, he said.
The landlords were inviting the court to fix a new expired tenancy for the four-year period and to fix terms in circumstances where the Oireachtas had not seen fit to do so under either the 1980 Act or its 1931 predecessor.
It is a matter for the Oireachtas to change the law if it sees fit to do so, he said.
On foot of those and other findings, he rejected the landlords’ case and said he would deal with costs issues on a later date.
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