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THE GOVERNMENT’S WEBSITE for the Children’s Referendum, ChildrensReferendum.ie, is now completely offline.
A spokesperson for the Department of Children told TheJournal.ie that the decision was made not to have the site online following yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling that the site, which was published by the government in September, was in breach of the terms of the 1995 McKenna ruling.
Yesterday, the website was taken offline within an hour of the Supreme Court ruling, but then restored in the evening with most of its content removed.
It contained only the text of the proposed new article 42A. However, the site has since been completely taken offline.
The Supreme Court had upheld a challenge against the informational site set up by the government, as well as a booklet distributed by the Department of Children and Youth Affairs, on the referendum. It found yesterday that the government had “acted wrongfully” in spending money on a website which was “not fair, equal or impartial”.
The challenge came from Dublin resident Mark McCrystal.
While delivering the ruling, Chief Justice Susan Denham said she did not consider it “either appropriate or necessary” to grant an injunction ordering the government to remove the website, however.
Voting on the referendum will take place tomorrow, Saturday, as scheduled.
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Hon Mayo
@RJ: slightly off topic lol though
The best enforcement is the residents plagued for years by noisy hen/stag/student parties who can now report and put the squeeze on illegal lets. And simply get the council spokesperson’s out on radio and print plus politicians supporting the new legislation : not expensive ad campaigns in a year’s time.
Property should be home first, second a pension option for locals because not everyone wants to buy. And for local hard working people whom want a holiday home, (maybe in their native county)
Instead of this. Why not stop those huge landlord groups whom in excess of 3 k rental properties this creates an monopoly.
Why did government give away all the NAMA held property, they would made more renting to people in need and sold some at low mortgage rates to people in need. Used the cash to reinvest in build more.
Instead of bail outs used the cash to find local builders to build homes like the 1920s/1930s.
If this was done we would not have these problems,
And we would not need to blame people for these issues.
We have people living in hotels, hotels turning into apartments, homes been rented instead for hotel like acomadtion.
All those supposedly experts should know how easy it is to fix those issues without blaming air BnB.
What needs to be done, is look at history take Kevin Street nearly all the housing from there towards the M50 is council.
Land needs to be zoned percentage for rental , for sale, hoilday / short let’s.
And councils to start building again.
They won’t have to accommodate Sam after today
If they are saying that any applications will get rejected anyway why would anyone bother applying? It doesn’t make sense.
@Sean: They’re not meant to apply. They’re meant to stop using Airbnb and return their houses to the long-term rental market.
4,315 of these were by hosts with multiple listings. THats the kikker line, landlords of flats and apartment who pulled them off the long term renal market to make a killing on AirBnB. The person who runs one as a family business should not be an issue like the BnBs that were there for years.
It is the greedy landlords screwing the renter that this act nails thankfully
How hard can it be to identify the properties? Just book a night in a few of them. One night will establish if it is a room in someones home or if a whole property is being used for short term letting.
have your say