Mr. Aidan O'Shea:

Yes. We looked at this situation from pre-pandemic to post-pandemic. MEI member schools worked with approximately 10,000 host families across the country. This dropped to just over 4,000 once we reopened. There was a myriad of reasons for this change, including people no longer looking to host because of close contact and older host families no longer perhaps being comfortable hosting, adult children who should have moved out now living at home, meaning the spare bedroom that would have been for language students is no longer there and young families not moving into their own homes and, therefore, not hosting students. The numbers in this regard are increasing but they are not back to where they were. In response to this development, many of our members have taken on extra accommodation, including purpose-built student accommodation that has cropped up in Dublin and elsewhere in Ireland in the past couple of years. It is expensive. Compared with tertiary education, we sell many more packages that include accommodation. This includes students who are staying for one or two weeks. The average length of stay in Ireland for an English language student is just over five weeks.