Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

We are in the middle of an emergency and a crisis. I appreciate that the Minister says those things will be done. However, we had a chance to stop the conversion of student accommodation in 2016 and the Government did not do that. Those in the Government need to have a bit of humility, hold up their hands and say, “We did not act although we could have seen this coming as we knew we were going to be in this situation this year”. For the students who are now travelling for hours, couch-surfing, living in overcrowded accommodation or paying for hotels, all of these measures are not going to solve their problems in the coming weeks and months. We need to sit down and then send out a very strong message to those who are converting student accommodation that they need to make more student accommodation available and use it for the purpose it was meant for. We need to do everything we possibly can to ensure these students are safely accommodated because without the accommodation, they cannot access third level education.

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