Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Tomorrow, the Union of Students in Ireland, USI, will lead thousands of students from various student unions in a march to the gates of Leinster House. The message they want to send to the Taoiseach is that given the huge budget surpluses now available to the Government, it is absolutely unacceptable if some portion is not used to address rampant, endemic student poverty and, in particular, the student housing and accommodation crisis that is leaving thousands of students couch surfing, commuting huge distances and forking out fortunes on public transport just to get to college, where they are then being hit with all the cost-of-living hikes, registration fees and so on. They want to know whether the Government will address these issues and, in particular, if it will provide affordable on-campus student accommodation on the scale that is necessary to deal with the student housing and accommodation crisis.

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