Mairead Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Gabhaim buíochas leis an Aire agus le chuile dhuine ón Roinn as teacht os comhair an choiste. We are pleased to have the Minister at committee. I forgot my glasses so I hope I will notice when the clock goes down to zero. This can in some sense follow on from the conversation we had last week as part of oral questions. I raised the fact that I felt this new student accommodation policy contained a lot of hullabaloo about something that, to me, was clearly a reannouncement of policies already in place. We had that discussion on Thursday, and then on Friday the Minister did a press launch in DCU, as he mentioned. In my opinion, he was rightly called out by the students' union for conducting a press launch and reannouncement of the 521 beds he had previously announced in March. I will quote from the students' union itself:

We were invited to attend this reannouncement, however declined for a number of reasons, including the Government's inaction on the genocide in Palestine, as well as us not having the opportunity to ask questions. We're sure there's a photo from last May they can reuse.

I ask the Minister for his views on that.