Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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I want to just acknowledge that TU Dublin's master plan has identified the need for student accommodation. Tomorrow, I will announce the appointment of expertise to work with the TUs to advance their plans. Waterford is a little different and I will come back to it presently. In general, the TUs have never been able to build accommodation before. As a result, we cannot expect them to have a plan to dust down. It has been different for UCD or UCC. They have had plans. Some of them have not been viable because of the cost of construction. We are trying to help them to get those moving. I want to have a situation where all the TUs are banging down my door to build student accommodation. I want the political tension, insofar as there is any, to be around the question of why we are not funding this quicker and why we cannot get it done. We are not yet at the point where we can go back to the Department with ten, 15 or 20 plans coming in from the universities or TUs on student accommodation but we need to get there. In making these comments I am not being not critical of the sector. We need to support the universities and my intention tomorrow is to provide them with the support that will enable them to come forward with plans that we can then move through the process into planning.

Housing is the biggest crisis the country faces. Our sector has an obligation to students to try to provide solutions. I think we have a bigger obligation. The Taoiseach has been very clear. The policy is called Housing for All and is for everybody in this country. It about providing all the housing that we need. Rather than just letting the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage shoulder all the burden, it is up to every Department to consider what it can do to help address the biggest crisis the country faces. I am simply not going to accept a scenario in which I, my Department or its agencies or the colleges adopt some sort of piecemeal approach to this. We will go to Government to request funding for ambitious plans to work with the sector to significantly expand the supply of student accommodation.

I want to get to a point where, by appointing expertise tomorrow, our universities, particularly our TUs, can come back to me in early 2024 with a plan which we can help to get over the line. The second thing I want to do tomorrow is to try to have identified the requirement of each region. I had a very good meeting with the presidents of the universities yesterday and I am sure I will have a good one with TU presidents tomorrow.

I had a very good meeting with Irish Universities Association presidents yesterday and I am sure I will have a good one with technological university presidents tomorrow. We have to look at this. In certain parts of the country we should not be precious about stating accommodation is for a specific university. It should be accommodation for students in that area. We see this in other countries not too far from here. We should look at Dublin, Cork, Galway and the south east and see what are the student accommodation needs. We should get everybody to come together and meet that student accommodation need rather than institutions being precious and stating student accommodation is theirs. The scale of the challenge is too big for small solutions or small ideas. We need to challenge ourselves to be ambitious.