Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

This is not just a Covid story. Students down through the years have lived in tents, hotels, bed and breakfast accommodation and hostels. There is a housing crisis right across society, as I laid out for the Tánaiste, from mica families to the women we heard yesterday. What they had to say was devastating. I do not know whether the Tánaiste heard them but he should listen to what they said. This has happened because the Government has looked at homes as an investment, as a potential profit margin for investors or individuals, as opposed to looking through the prism of securing a roof over somebody's head, whether it is the student, the woman in her 50s or the mica families, who have had to take their campaign to the streets.

The Tánaiste talks about his plans in Housing for All. Is he not listening? The president of DCU stated, very clearly, that it is uneconomic, based on a false assumptions and will only result in rents that are beyond the ability to pay for most students and their families. There are immediate steps the Government can take. More than one third of all purpose-built student accommodation, which gets tax breaks and planning for student accommodation, is being repurposed as tourist accommodation. Will the Government introduce the legislation we, and in particular Deputy Conway-Walsh, have been calling for to stop that in its tracks and provide the capital for the State to build the necessary units?

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