Michael Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I compliment and thank Sinn Fein on introducing this Bill. It is very important to acknowledge the trials and tribulations that students and their parents go through in trying to get, and better themselves through, third level education. My brother has rightly outlined the enormous expense involved and the torture in the racket of trying to get accommodation, which can be quite frightening and extraordinarily expensive.

It is right to say that students work very hard and diligently trying to make as much money as they can to help their parents with the massive costs but then it comes back on them. I have seen numerous cases where the genuine hard and good work of the student has adversely affected the parents, in that all of a sudden they do not qualify for a grant, just because they put in that effort, because they worked on Saturdays and Sundays and did their level best. They were up in the morning instead of not being out. We want to encourage the young people of today to work at every opportunity. We get only one shot at life and it is not a practice run, it is only right and proper to work at every level and in every way we can. That is only the right thing to do and we want to encourage them to do it and not let them think that if they work now to earn their few bob and save, it will come back and hurt their parents.

The other problem is the availability of accommodation. Every obstacle is put in the way of the people who try to provide the accommodation. That is wrong. Before now there were incentives. I am not saying every incentive was right because some of those incentives had an opposite effect by blowing into the bubble of increasing the value of properties and that was not right. Surely to God there is some sensible and practical way to encourage people to make more accommodation. It is a question of supply and demand. If there is more good-quality accommodation available for students, it helps bring down the overall cost instead of people in a mad panic trying to get accommodation. It is very difficult for parents. It is a very stressful time when people do not have disposable money and are really struggling to save to better their children, to improve their lives. I should have declared at the beginning that it could be perceived that I would have an interest in this type of business as well but my job now is to speak on behalf of the constituents I am elected to represent, their parents, the students and their grandparents. My job is to come in here and support Sinn Fein in what it is trying to achieve.

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