Ms Michelle Byrne:

I thank the Deputies for their comments and questions. I will address Deputy Barry's question on the hidden homeless. Almost one in ten students were registered as homeless on the night of the census. We are seeing a lot of hidden homelessness in couch-surfing, for example, where people do not identify with the word "homeless". They see themselves as students attending college. They are commuting and couch-surfing. They do not register that they are part of the homelessness epidemic.

This week I was in a Cork college - we were running a piece about housing - and a student came up to me and said she was travelling from Dublin to Cork every day to complete her master's. It was not because she could not afford rent. She is paying rent in Dublin. She could not afford the rent she was asked to pay upfront for one term with a deposit on top of her fees, which would amount to €14,000 in September. That is the reality. They are the stories we hear every day. It is affecting academic performance. She told me that next year when her timetable changes, classes will not start at 12 o'clock anymore but at 9 o'clock. She knows already she will miss those classes because she cannot get from Dublin to Cork in time to attend them. That is how it affects academic performance.

With regard to housing standards and partitions, we are in a housing crisis and housing standards are not being adhered to in any way. Students are thankful they have their heads on beds and have roofs over their heads. They are desperate. They are not willing to challenge it. They cannot because they will be told if they do not like it they should get out because there is another person waiting. They are issues we see all the time. We recognise that the RTB got extra resources in budget 2019 and we hope we will be able to look at auditing houses like this and clamping down on the problems we see daily. I hope that gives Deputy Barry some insight.

I will comment on what Deputy Funchion said about additional resources to SUSI. There is the student assistance fund and the chaplaincy fund, which is given out on an ad hocbasis. I think the student assistance fund is the one the Deputy was referring to when she stated that students have to qualify for a grant first. It is done per institution. I have heard stories of certain guidelines where extra criteria have been added to cut waiting lists for the student assistance fund but it is not across the board. From my experience in Waterford Institute of Technology a number of years ago, it was not the case; anyone could apply for the student assistance fund regardless of their eligibility for the SUSI grant.