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LANDLORDS IN DUBLIN and other cities and areas who raise the rent by more than the legally allowed limit could face criminal charges under new measures being proposed by government.
Housing Minister Eoghan Murphy today secured Cabinet approval for the general scheme of the new Residential Tenancies Bill.
Providing it passes through the Oireachtas, the Residential Tenancies Act will bring into force a host of new measures designed at increasing protections for tenants in the private rental market.
These include making it a criminal offence for landlords with properties in designated Rent Pressure Zones (RPZs) to raise the rent above the legally allowed 4%.
Rent Pressure Zones were introduced by government in late 2016 to combat spiralling rents. All of Dublin, Cork city, Galway city and various other areas are designated RPZs.
Despite the threat of sanctions, there have been widespread reports of landlords breaching the rules and raising rents above the limits. Government hopes that the threat of criminal sanctions will make landlords more compliant.
“What we’re bringing now is a sanctions regime making it a criminal offence, that we’ll follow with a number of measures that will be allowed to be implemented by the RTB (Residential Tenancies Board) including fines,” Murphy told reporters today.
He said at the moment the fine being considered would be in the region of €15,000.
He also that government was “exploring” options of jail time for non-compliant landlords.
Murphy said he hoped that the Bill would pass quickly through the Oireachtas and be made into law before the summer recess.
Other measures
Other measures in the bill include strengthening the power of the RTB to go out and proactively investigate private rental dwellings and landlords when they feel there may be an issue.
Currently a complaint needs to be made by an existing tenant before it can investigate.
The Bill will also allow for a public register of rents in a certain area, so that tenants will know what they should be paying.
It will also contain measures to increase the notice periods for tenants facing eviction, to give them a longer time in the property before they have to leave.
While the measures have been welcomed by people working in the housing not-for-profit sector and opposition party members, there is criticism that they don’t go far enough.
“The legislation should go further,” said Sinn Féin housing spokesperson Eoin Ó Broin.
The government needs to revisit the Focus Ireland amendment which would prevent buy-to let landlords who benefited from tax breaks from seeking vacant possession when they are looking to sell.
There are currently 1,739 families with 3,755 children homeless and living in emergency accommodation in Ireland – an unprecedented number.
Homelessness charity Focus Ireland said that about 500 children could have been prevented from becoming homeless last year if laws were brought in that prevented tenants from being evicted in cases where a house is being sold.
The current Bill will not introduce these laws, with Murphy telling TheJournal.ie today that he will speak to Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe about this to see what incentives could be brought in during negotiations for October’s Budget.
Fianna Fáil
Murphy also took the opportunity today to respond to comments from new Fianna Fáil housing spokesperson Darragh O’Brien, who told the Sunday Independent that Murphy and Taoiseach Leo Varadkar were “too elitist” to fix the housing crisis.
“What I would ask them is to get out into the real world to actually look at how this housing crisis is affecting people,” O’Brien said.
Murphy today branded O’Brien’s comments as “useless”.
“I couldn’t think of a more useless contribution to the national debate on housing and homelessness,” he said, and accused Fianna Fáil of having broken the housing market when they were in power.
He criticised the “personal attack” from O’Brien.
Sinn Féin today said that it would be holding off on tabling a motion of no confidence in Murphy, after it had signalled that it would do so. Party leader Mary Lou McDonald said that it was delaying the motion due to the importance of the upcoming referendum campaign.
She was strongly critical of government, today saying that “the clock was ticking” on Murphy’s time as minister.
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So, basically, the boards.ie administrator was a dunce.
Agreed, this was no hack the administrator of boards was negligent using the same password for two different services. It amazes me how lax people are with passwords, pet name year of birth etc.
Hey that’s victim blaming ……. Oh wait .. yeah it is a bit like leaving a BMW unlocked in Dolphins Barn with a laptop and Iphone in view and expecting nothing to happen.
That part of the report was taken from his submission which we couldn’t cross examine as he pleaded guilty. Its factually incorrect as the password was unique and not used on Twitter. It was also a strong password and we believe it was snatched during a “man-in-the-middle” attack.
Boards.ie/journal.ie are the same company, how much of this article can be taken at face value ?
I hope you were referring to the site administrator when you said Muppet!
Shocking lack of security on behalf of boards.ie really amateur stuff!
Or how about changing the headline to – Script Kiddy discovers gaping hole in Boards.ie security, boards thank him for identifying the hole and have since upgraded their security policy.
Companies pay kids like this to run penetration testing on their IT systems, having your IT admin use the same password on his twitter as for the server is a big facepalm.
Very surprised he didn’t go through a proxy for his hacking especially when he was a bit of a whizz kid.
Whizz kids usually use 7 proxies.
Yeah he’s a bit of a dope to get caught. Using his own ip address; scarlet for him.
How did such a security flaw cost boards.ie 30,000 Euro? All they had to do was delete the unauthorised file and change passwords. I’d say Boards.ie just exaggerated the claim to deck out their office and buy a couple of new servers, ipads, Macbooks etc
My password is my first name.
Boom?
Its factually incorrect to say the same password was used on Twitter. It wasn’t. The password was unique, it was also a strong password and we believe it was snatched during a “man-in-the-middle” attack.
OK buddy, we get you
Who are you trying to kid, Tom?
I remember having a few pints with you in town one night around that time, and I had a quick look at your phone when you were in the jacks*.
All of your passwords were the same. TomLuvsBords4Lyfe
*That chick who was pretending to be a journalist made me do it. She was hot, and I thought I had a chance.
Sorry for being the “Man-In-The-Middle”. :(
By the way, what year is that screenshot from?
When I look at the level of moderation on that site I am not surprised that the admins would be clueless. No surprises that this place is linked to them.
A bit OTT to extradite someone over something like this, no?
How is this hacking if you have the password ?
” Playing a game” They never change, do they? Kids will be kids!
I remember my first hacking back in 1983. I thought I was hacking into a video games company’s computer, to play all their unreleased games, but, it turned out, I was accidentally hacking into a NORAD supercomputer that was using games like chess as military simulators to calibrate how to react in a situation where the USA and the USSR began launching missiles, to spare as many lives as possible. I remember the designer, Dr Falken, used a backdoor password called “Joshua,” that the NORAD people weren’t aware of. I figured it out after doing some intense studying on the guy, and realised that was the name of his late son. So, me and a friend started playing this game on WOPR, that was the supercomputer’s name, called “Global Thermonuclear War,” and we started bombing cities like Las Vegas and Seattle, thinking we were playing a game, meanwhile, at NORAD, they thought the Russians were sending missiles their way. Long story short, after an arrest, an escape, a meeting with Dr Falken on his reclused island, we got back in time before the US responded to the phantom bombs, only for WOPR to try and overtake the system and figure out the code to send the missiles itself! So, we figured we’d let it play a game of tic-tac-toe, a game it couldn’t win or lose at, and it realised that there was no winning and decided not to play any more and decided not to set off the missiles.
God, those were the days!
I wonder who inserted my name into Irish waters database…. I didn’t…
My password is password.
How did he get the Twitter password? Was it hacked too?
I would imagine the sript kiddy used some kind of a widely known exploit to crack the password, if it cracked easy then it was unlikely very strong… provbably something like ‘ilikeboards’ or ‘boards123′
wysiwyg
Give that young man a job, he clearly knows more than others about IT security.
1Password enough said would end that problem in terms of using same password
It won’t take long for his next attempt and he won’t be caught.
A year suspended sentence is a bit harsh.
ok so how did he actually get Twitter password?
as by the sound of it he actually hacked Twitter not boards ie – he just logged onto boards.ie as proper user (admin)
Amateur. My password is passw0rd. They will never guess the o is a 0.
What’s with your quoting wysiwyg? And why should he get a job when his intentions are to falsify and steal from others? Any reason or answer?
Quoting wysiwyg was an example of “easy to guess” passwords. From reading that article, it suggests the site admin has used same/similar credentials for multiple accounts, which is extremely bad practice.
It states in the article that the hacker in this case didn’t divulge it share this information, instead the hack was to prove how easily it was in fact done.
The fact the hacker was only 17 at the time, probably had a bearing on a non custodial sentence.
Along a similar line, you’ll find AV vendors have actually hired people who wrote/spread malicious viruses, as they clearly have the ability to program and bypass security.
Hence my logic.
Give the lad a job, clearly he could seal up a few holes.
have your say