Ms Clare Austick:

The largest barrier in access to education is the financial cost. It is not a desire to attend college or awareness of it that is lacking. It is due to the cost of attending higher education, that is, the cost of student accommodation coupled with the fees, the cost of living and the hidden course material costs. It is everything together. The TU Dublin cost-of-living guide estimates that it costs €10,000 to attend one year of college. It differentiates between people attending college in Dublin, Galway, Cork or Letterkenny. We need a new student accommodation strategy that commits to tackling the student accommodation crisis in the most effective and efficient manner possible and has short-term, medium-term, and long-term goals. It has to be accompanied by making higher education accessible and reducing the student contribution charge immediately, if not abolishing it. We want the Government to provide support to colleges to build their own student accommodation that is affordable and based on a cost-rental model. We need a new student accommodation strategy and we need to tackle the financial aspect and the cost placed on students to attend college. Otherwise, we will not get anywhere.