Tenant gets half her rental deposit back after dispute with landlady

Disagreements that arose between a landlady and her tenant were outlined at Navan District Court where the tenant took a claim to the Small Claims Court for the return of a €650 deposit which she said she was owed after leaving the tenancy.

The claimant was Melissa Vighette, with an address at Edgeword Lawns, Dublin 15 and the landlady Aida Darcy, Turnberry, Brownstown, Ratoath.

Ms Vighette said she rented a room in the property and while there was no tenancy agreement there was an agreement about the deposit – she paid a month’s rent in advance and the €650 deposit in August 2023 and left in November 2024. There was no agreement as to when she would leave the property.

She said that Ms Darcy sent her a message asking her to leave the house several times. She said she “didn’t feel safe” because the landlady entered her room, her “private room”. The tenant said she was asked to leave the house because the landlady wasn’t happy that she wasn’t telling her when she was leaving the house or “getting late”.

She had left the house the next day. She said the landlady sent a message “you out, would you like to leave”. She left a message several times telling her that she wanted her to leave.

Ms Darcy said they did have a disagreement. She said that “On the night beforehand” Melissa had gone out. Her husband liked the alarm put on every night. Melissa hadn’t come home on this particular night and she (Ms Darcy) couldn’t set the alarm.

“We did have a verbal agreement, for sure, that we had a month’s notice. The deposit was not backdated or anything like that. When I asked her to leave it was not that day, that night, or leave her out of her home. She came through the house with a friend of hers who I didn’t know and allowed them to come into our house. I didn’t know that that person was upstairs. She was not asked to go that day, that night. I would never throw anyone out and because it was Christmas I didn’t re-let the room until January 22nd because of the time of year it was and I was at the loss of that rent”.

Ms Darcy said that she and her husband were “exceptionally good to her”. They had children of their own, around the same age, in fairness.

Ms Vighette said that she noticed things moved around in her room. She asked the landlady not to come into her room and she claimed Ms Darcy replied “Sorry, I’m Irish, I like to go and see everything”. She said that one day she lost her key on the bus and when she got home she found she had no key to enter her room and then found that Ms Darcy had a third key. She said that lone day she had “slept over” at her friend’s and didn’t tell the landlady and she “got very angry with me”. She added “for the whole week she was very rude to me becaue I didn’t tell her where I was”.

Judge McKiernan directed Ms Darcy to pay her former tenant €325 and she agreed to comply by 12th December next.