James Lawless (Kildare North, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I visited UCC recently and saw its tremendous work. I want to give full credit to John O'Halloran and his team. I visited the Tyndall National Institute as well, which is a leading-edge institute. People like Professor Séamus Davis are there. He is the leading quantum physicist of his generation, at the Nobel prize-winning-type level. This is where he is headed. This is happening in UCC in and around the Tyndall National Institute and on the campus proper, so there is a really good story to tell there.

Specifically on student accommodation, I think the Crow's Nest student accommodation was supported through my Department, as we discussed before. I met the representatives of the students union in UCC when I visited recently as well. I discussed things like the standardised design guide I brought through for student accommodation. Those colleges that did put their hands up for the €100 million fund were DCU, UCD and Maynooth University. Maynooth University has 116 beds coming on stream this September, while UCC recently had 493 beds and there is a tender with DCU's board to consider. This is the first phase out of multiple phases of that initiative. I am dependent on national development plan funding for it because this is capital funding.

That is something I will continue to chase and I hope we get that ramped up at scale. We can take all sorts of measures but ultimately, purpose-built student accommodation on campus is the answer to the student accommodation challenge.