Matt Shanahan (Waterford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I understand a decision on funding for the Waterford North Quays development is being considered by the Cabinet today. Will the Taoiseach confirm its status?

I understood the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, would be taking Leaders' Questions today and I wanted to ask about student accommodation. My question is about what is being proposed for the future, given that students have, to a large degree, been left at the back of the queue in terms of our accommodation crisis. Some students might have the choice of living at home but they are largely in the minority of those accessing third level. At best, it would be inconvenient for families who have the required economic resources. For those who need to travel for education, accommodation issues certainly are a personal life-limiting event.

The national student accommodation strategy from 2016, which runs for another two years, is a shared policy between the Departments of Housing, Local Government and Heritage and Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science. Sadly, the strategy clearly is not up to the task. I refer to the particular accommodation crisis in Waterford. Bizarrely, despite the big plans that are forever in the future for Waterford's higher education sector, the Department's 2016 strategy models no additional student accommodation whatsoever for Waterford.

Waterford Institute of Technology, WIT - now the South East Technological University, SETU - was at the vanguard in developing its own student accommodation, with the College Fields development dating back to 1992. Great foresight was demonstrated by the college leadership at that time. It prudently borrowed to build enduring public resources for students, which, 30 years later, provide income to the college. In 2012, in the midst of construction work, the capacity for borrowing was taken away from WIT. This is a capacity that has enabled the building of accommodation in every other university in Ireland, including in Galway, Cork, Limerick and Dublin. Irish universities have more than €1 billion of debt at this time, much of it to the European Investment Bank, EIB. Little of it relates to funding accommodation for the new technological university, TU, sector. At this point, none of it relates to SETU.

Will the Taoiseach commit to revising the national student accommodation strategy? Will the Government reintroduce a borrowing capacity to SETU and end the discrimination within the third level capital funding capacity at present? Most importantly, will the Taoiseach support the building of badly needed student accommodation in Waterford to allow the expansion of college numbers that is so badly needed to end the brain drain in the south-east region? We need student accommodation that is tailored to student needs and to allow family homes that are inappropriately rented at this time to be returned to the rental sector and to private family use.

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