Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

The proposition before the Dáil at the moment is simple. The idea is that if a student cannot take up the place he or she has rented for public health reasons, whether he or she is ill, has to isolate or is unable to travel, the rents and related charges should be returned. The vast majority of people would say that is basic common sense. It is, however, a common sense with which the corporate landlords have not agreed over the space of the past year and more.

Last year, in Cork, for example, the Uninest facility on Western Road, which is used by many University College Cork, UCC, students and which charges them an arm and a leg for accommodation - €9,000 worth - initially refused to give back the moneys that had been paid by students who were unable to take up their accommodation because of the pandemic. I congratulate the students' union, the students who protested and the campaign which forced a change on this particular issue.

While the corporate landlord in this case was forced to step back, still to this day, it has the legal right to do exactly what it did last year. These are completely unfair, unjust and extortionate policies. This Bill is about removing that right and, of course, it should be.

I also add my congratulations to the Union of Students in Ireland. It cannot trust the Government on this issue, however. How many Bills have we seen which the Government, for PR reasons, backed away from on Second Stage and then buried in committees? The pressure must be kept on Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Green Party, which to its shame has been slow on this issue.

We need to scrap fees, introduce a decent living grant and for students to be able to afford rents which must also be reasonable. That is another whole debate which we will have here again sometime.

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