Patrick O'Donovan (Limerick County, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

There was capital investment in the past 12 months. I outlined it in the response that I gave. It came from the windfall. The current supply figures show that almost 15,000 beds have been completed since 2017. Of these, 1,500 were completed in 2023 alone. As I said a while ago with regard to costs, one of the most important things, which I hope the Deputy will welcome and support, is the legislation that the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, will bring forward on the 51-week versus 40-week leases for students, where they are not charged for the time outside term when they are not there. I hope the Deputy supports that.

Deputy Durkan's homeplace includes Maynooth University, which is one of the three that have been advanced. We will be anxious to see what other levers are available to us. The long-standing, older universities have access to the European Investment Bank, as I mentioned a while ago. Some of them have used it quite effectively and have borrowing mechanisms. Others are using different tools. A substantial number of private sector planning permissions have been granted and, for one reason or another, have not been taken up. There is a body of work to encourage local authorities to make sure that unused planning permissions are taken up where possible and to engage with developers. As well as that, the town centre first and the vacancy proposals that have been supported by the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, through the rural and urban regeneration programmes are other initiatives that have been welcomed in many provincial towns such as Maynooth. They have given life back to the centre of towns, where older properties can be brought back into use through schemes such as Croí Cónaithe, which the Department will certainly support.

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