Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Government's Housing for All Plan contains a detailed and comprehensive series of actions to substantially increase supply of all types of housing and accommodation, including student accommodation. I think it is sometimes hard to decouple the issues that students face in relation to accommodation from the boarder housing issues. That is why I have referenced Housing for All. The plan is backed by the largest housing budget in the history of the State. There is a €20 billion budget behind it. I have been engaging extensively with my Department on the issue, with the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage and his Department, as well as with the wider higher education sector, student representative groups and other stakeholders. In recent weeks I chaired a meeting of all higher education institutions and the Union of Students of Ireland, USI, to further pursue the issue. I have corresponded with all chairs and presidents of the new technological universities at least twice this year regarding the current issues with accommodation and how we can try to resolve them.

As I said to Deputy Conway-Walsh earlier, we are approaching the new academic year with two different realities. First, we are approaching the year with around 600 additional student accommodation beds. Second, I hope we are approaching the year in which we can begin to get the rent-a-room scheme back up and running, which fell off a cliff during the height of the Covid pandemic. They are the two most immediate avenues that we can pursue. In addition to the 600 beds I mentioned earlier, another 674 beds are due to become available during the academic year in NUI Galway. The bigger project that I am genuinely working intensively on is to try to put a new model in place to deliver student accommodation. I am saying openly and bluntly that I think it will require public and State subvention to bridge what seems to be the market failure challenge that universities and colleges are experiencing at the moment. There will have to be an affordability conversation in return for any subvention made by the State. However, there are many planning permissions in the pipeline for college-owned student accommodation that could be built if we can unleash the new model. I am engaging with the Cabinet subcommittee on housing on the matter next week.

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