Colm Burke (Cork North Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

In Cork city, we now have more than 8,000 purpose-built student units. They have all come onstream over the past ten years. Between the last six months, and in the coming 12 months at least 1,500 more spaces will come onstream. The problem is that the ownership and control of a lot of the student accommodation is with a small number of companies. The rent, therefore, that students are paying is extremely high. Is there any way that can be controlled? I hear of people paying up to €250 per week per bed unit. Can that be controlled in any way, or does the Department have plans to look at that? I know that student accommodation is costly to build, but these are units built over a number of years and still the cost being charged to the student is extremely high. The second issue I want to touch on relates to people who go back to college after getting a primary degree. They have a BA or BComm, for example, and decide to go back to study medicine. They have to pay full fees. I accept that the fees have to be paid, but they are not entitled to write off the cost of that against tax once they come out of college. If I, for instance, were to set up a business in the morning and spent €100,000 investing in that business, I am entitled to write off the cost tax wise of establishing that business. If I were to come along and spent €15,000 or €16,000 per year over five years, which I think is the fee to study medicine, that is a lot of money. However, when I qualify I am not entitled to write off that expense against income tax. Has there been any engagement with the Department of Finance on that issue? We need to get more people into a number of different areas, and one of those is medicine. There is now also the challenge of people trying to borrow money to do postgraduate courses. A number of financial institutions have walked away from providing that finance. Is that area being looked at?