Cork residents fail in 'class action' against landlord over anti-social activity by his tenants

More than that, I think. I don't see how even an incorporated residents association would have standing to bring the claim; it wouldn't occupy any of the adjacent properties any more than the unincorporated residents association did. The appeal tribunal itself points to what is needed; it's "for the affected residents themselves to be named" as applicants in the claim.

No. Read the report in full. Also, think about the issues here. What was the basis of the claim in the first place?

The basis for the claim is that tenants have a right to quiet possession of the properties they have rented, and antisocial behaviour by their neighbours infringes that right. Therefore the tenants are given certain remedies to vindicate their right to quiet possession, one being the option of suing their antisocial neighbours (for being antisocial) and another being the option of suing their antisocial neighbours' landlord (for not exercising his rights under the least to control or evict the antisocial neighbours).

But the key to this is the right to quiet possession. That belongs to the tenants, not to the residents association. So the proper applicants were the tenants, not the residents association.

It's true that the residents association was unincorporated, but incorporating it wouldn't solve the problem; the incorporated association still wouldn't have any right to quiet possession, and so couldn't claim compensation for infringement of that right. Only the tenants could claim that compensation.

The unincorporated nature of the association wasn't the problem here. In fact, I think it was an attempt to get around the problem. An incorporated body - e.g. a limited company - is at law a separate person from its shareholders/members. If you infringe a right of mine, your liability is to me, and not to a company of which I happen to be a shareholder. Therefore, I have to sue you, not my company.

By not incorporating, I think the applicants hoped to argue that the residents association wasn't a separate person from the residents; it was simply all the residents acting collectively. Thus they could all sue the landlord without revealing their individual identities. That didn't work, obviously. But as far as I can see incorporating the residents association also won't work. This claim has to be brought in by the affected tenants themselves.

Oh, sure, the legislation could be changed to allow representative organisations to make compensation claims on behalf of neighbours. (If it is, I don't see any reason why the change should only allow incorporated representative organisations to bring claims.)

And, until it is, I don't think incorporation will change anything. I think it's a bit of a red herring, to be honest.

In this case they evidently did prove that the landlord delayed; that's why they won at first instance. And the landlord doesn't seem to be challenging that; he blames the delay on "defective legal advice".

If a landlord took steps to evict but the RTB frustrated those steps, he's have a fairly strong argument if sued by the neighbours that he couldn't be liable for failure/delay resulting from the orders of the RTB. But that wasn't the case here.

I'm interpreting it at face value, assuming that it means what it says. He was advised that he wasn't entitled to evict, or that an attempt to evict would not be successful, or something of the kind, so he didn't take steps to evict until well after he could have. And if he didn't make an attempt to convict, then it simply cannot be true that the attempt was frustrated by the RTB. How can you frustrate an attempt that has not been made?

Plus, the report says elsewhere that, when he did serve an eviction notice and it was challenged by the tenant, the RTB upheld it. Which is the opposite of frustrating his attempts to convict.