Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I join Deputy Farrell in recognising the major milestone that starting third level education is for so many young people, and indeed not-so-young people. The Deputy and I have not met in the House since the results came out. This year, we saw three out of five students getting their top choice of course, and I acknowledge that achievement. However, the Deputy is right that the housing challenge is real and places stress and difficulty on students, particularly those who find they need to move to a different part of the country to undertake their study.

I assure the Deputy, students and parents that we are working tirelessly to try to address the supply of student accommodation, given the wider rental market challenges as well. I am very pleased that these are not just words and that we have changed Government policy regarding student accommodation. In November, as the Deputy will recall, I got the go-ahead from the Government for €61 million in capital and current funding to unlock the development of around 1,100 student accommodation beds. These were beds in Dublin City University, DCU, Limerick, Galway and Maynooth, which had planning permission but had been deemed to be not viable. We have intervened for the first time with taxpayers' money to start building purpose-built accommodation, including 242 beds at the University of Galway, which the Deputy knows very well. These are developments that had planning permission but had stalled because of increased construction and financing costs.

I want to go further faster. We are working with University College Dublin, UCD, and Trinity College Dublin to try to get two projects over the line. I intend to update the Government, probably as soon as next week or the week after, regarding the DCU development as well. We have provided €1 million to our technological universities - I know there are some questions on this later - so that they can prepare their plans for student accommodation. I expect to start seeing plans from each of the technological universities in 2024. This is an area that is receiving my attention.

To provide context, we are seeing students return to third level with more beds this year than last year. There are an additional 938 college-owned student accommodation beds this year compared to the last academic year, and 674 of them are in the University of Galway. There are also over 2,000 additional privately-funded beds due for completion this autumn.

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