Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 22 November 2018

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government

Residential Tenancies (Student Rents, Rights and Protections) Bill 2018: Discussion

9:30 am

Photo of Eoin Ó BroinEoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

There are about 33,000 units of student-specific accommodation in the State at the moment. Some 11,000 of those are on-campus or run by education institutions and about 20,000 are private. Our view is that we cannot have a scenario in which one set of tenancy rights applies to one group of students and not to another group. Our preference is that all student-specific accommodation is included in that sense. That would require a change because the Residential Tenancies Act specifically excludes higher education institution student-specific accommodation.

It is also important to note that the Government, in its student accommodation strategy, proposes to increase the number of student-specific accommodation units from 33,000 to 75,000 by 2024. Even if those targets are met, the shortfall between supply and demand will remain the same, at in or around 20,000. There is a shortfall of 21,000 bed spaces now and at the end of this strategy, if all the targets are met, there will be a shortfall of 20,000 bed spaces. Even if the targets are met, there will still be pressure on prices.

Coming back to Senator Boyhan's point, one of the big difficulties is that the bulk of the student-specific accommodation being built, particularly in Dublin, Galway, Limerick and Cork, is being funded by private investment firms with a very specific business model. They avail of very generous tax reliefs which are not available to universities or others. Their business model is to build high-end, high-price, student-specific accommodation to target either the international student market or those who have the means to afford very expensive accommodation. It is not enough just to say we need the supply because if supply is not provided at a price that students can genuinely afford, particularly those from families with average and modest incomes, there is a problem.

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