Letting Agent entered my property without consent

OP. You are a nightmare in this thread. I cant imagine having you as a tenant, housemate or anything like that would be easy at all.

Your life would be far easier if you just got on with it.

People making a mountain of a molehill here. The OP was moving out. They didnt answer the phone or the door. Agent went either to check were they ok or had they wrecked the place or to see what would need to be done with the place. OP is clearly a PITH, so its not a stretch to assume that the EA was concerned what they place would be like.

p.s. having read OP's post back again all I can say is that the very first reactions this poster had were completely over the top. I actually thought the entire post was a wind up.

Their very first words to the letting agent were "who the hell are you"? Unless it was a burglar in the middle of the night I wouldn't ask someone this way who they are. I'd say "oh Hi, who are you, were you ringing the bell, I didn't hear you?" Its antagonistic and rude at the very least.

Saying that the agent had the "temerity to cross examine" me! Talk about being on a high horse! Its called asking a question, its not cross examination, its not having temerity (especially when OP hadn't answered previous texts or phone calls).

If the OP thinks its "not valid" to ask for bin charges at the end of the lease then why did he/she not bring this up 3 YEARS AGO when signing the lease?? It must be great to get 3 years of free bins when everyone else around was paying theirs? You are meant to read contracts before you sign them, if you don't that's on you.

I'm not going to get dragged into several arguments regarding your last response to me, as you appear to have a very blinkered perspective on things. However, I think it is worth putting you straight on a particular point that you've mentioned more than once now. 

In particular, you have said that:

- "she gave me a positive reference, so I was never a problem tenant"

- "The agent in question several weeks ago gave me a glowing reference"

To cut to the chase, a letting agent will understandably give a positive or glowing reference even for the worst of tenants if it helps get rid of them and pass the problem on to someone else! That's very common in fact. 

And even if this was not the case with you and you genuinely appeared to the agent to be a good tenant, you certainly seem to have deliberately held off raising your grievances regarding rent increases and bin charges with them till after they provided the reference.

that's another problem... the landlord should have been identified on the lease

for some properties, you can get details of the owner from the Land Registry - https://www.landdirect.ie/

is the property listed on https://www.rtb.ie/check/index.html (it's not always accurate though)

The agent had no right to be in the house.

Zero.

There's no excuse "agent went to check they were ok" Don't make me laugh. If you called to your friend's house unannounced and they didn't answer, would you break in to check they were ok?

And if some stranger appeared in the hallway "who the hell are you?!" would be the most civil thing I would have said.

So the agent was concerned and called you after getting no answer or call back they went out to the apartment to see if you were there and talk to you, you didn't answer the door but they could hear movement inside ( could be a break in) so they went in. Instead of listening to them you give out. Did you ever find out what they wanted. You missed an opportunity to let them check over the place and approve returning your deposit agree the meter readings..... If you weren't ready, the polite thing to do would be answer the door and talk to them, asking them to come back tomorrow.... but you instead went off on them.

You've now burned any good will.

Here's how it will play out. They'll get a cleaner to come in and reclean the apartment after finding something you missed, they'll paint something else blaming you for excessive wear. All documented and after the bills are settled including meter reading they'll refund whatever is left of your deposit. Full days cleaning, 500, painter 500, materials 200... .you'll see maybe half of your deposit. They'll take their time too and blame it on electric Ireland, if you open a case with the RTB they'll delay refunding your deposit until after the case. Given you've told them not to contact you they'll respect that and you'll have to wait and see what happens.

Brilliant well done, you have the moral high ground, they have your money.

They trespassed on the property.

They had no right to enter, and they used a key they had no right to use and entered the property without the permission of the tenant.

Where's the miscommunication? There was no communication. Just a few missed calls.

There's no other way to spin this.

well, their "lease" says that you should replace broken equipment on your own, so you just followed their guidelines

but, I hope you have receipts! make sure to request a refund, as it's LL's responsibility to fix/replace broken equipment like that

PS in general... you're telling them too much, and too soon, no point arguing, you just need to prepare the case for RTB.

you've revealed your plan to the agent too soon...

make sure to prepare all receipts, and request a refund through RTB