James Lawless (Kildare North, Fianna Fail)

I thank the Deputy. On the numbers for State-sponsored student accommodation, I think I mentioned earlier that there is €100 million allocated to the first phase, which is sort of an acceleration phase. There was a general call-out done on that and the three institutions that put their hands up and said they were ready to go with it were Maynooth, UCD and DCU. Maynooth moved quickly and it now has 116 beds ready to come on stream this September. UCD recently confirmed 493 beds to be provided on site or at the college. I have been on site, seen the plans and seen exactly where it is going to go. That is moving pretty swiftly forward. DCU has a project of a similar number before its board for appraisal at the moment. That brings us to about 1,000 beds between those three. That is sort of kickstart project worth €100 million. My intention would be, very much as the Deputy suggested, to invest significantly in provision of further State-sponsored accommodation over the next couple of years. I published a standardised design strategy quite recently. I just got that approved by the Government two weeks ago and published it and I intend to publish a student accommodation strategy by the end of this year, which will set out how we plan to tackle the challenge of student accommodation. I meet those students as well and I hear the stories the Deputies have described. They are universal and they are across the country, so I completely understand.

On the statistics, I brought to Cabinet this week the education indicators report, which is a framework that shows the story of education in the country. We have more people in higher education, further education, apprenticeships and research, including PhDs, then ever before. It is very much a success story. The level of educational attainment is at a higher level than ever before. The level of capital and current investment is greater than ever before and the outcomes are almost universally positive also. That goes back to investment in the system over many years. For the first time, that indicators survey includes student accommodation, so there is a breakdown between student-specific accommodation, private rental, digs and living at home. Roughly speaking, it is about 45% student-specific accommodation, maybe 30% private rental, 16% in digs and the rest are commuting from home. While it is not a silver bullet, and indeed nothing is, digs are an increasingly popular option. They are a sort of a traditional option but there were a couple of campaigns run by my Department in recent years to create awareness and encourage the provision of digs accommodation and its use by students. Most colleges now have a website or portal that people can check to see if beds are available. In most cases that is a live resource people can look at. Often in cases where there may not be accommodation available in a dedicated apartment in student-specific or private rental, there are digs beds available in the same area, so it is an option perhaps for new students in first or second year. Typically when they make friends and move on, they tend to organise themselves in later years, but digs are very much an option as well and one we are encouraging through a number of schemes, various Revenue reliefs as well as practical campaigns. It is between those different options. I agree with the Deputy that this is what we need to do. We need to invest in State-built student accommodation. That is happening and is part of the student strategy that will be published later this year.