Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I also thank Deputies Farrell and Ó Broin for their work on this legislation. It is an important step forward to protect both students and homeowners. We do not want to discourage people from renting out a room but we feel the generous amounts in tax subsidies allowed should come with a requirement to protect those renting out their rooms. However, the overall issue of student accommodation has been neglected by this Government. We have had promise after promise, but we see the impact in counties like my own, County Mayo, with students there and all over Ireland trying to access colleges. Affordable student accommodation has become the biggest barrier in accessing third-level education. The crisis of student accommodation is just another aspect of the housing crisis, and a decade of underfunding in higher education has left us with a chronic lack of student accommodation. Right now, there are shovel-ready projects that could deliver more than 3,000 student beds. They have been shelved due to the lack of Government support. The announcement previously made to deliver student beds has not come to fruition in Dublin or Cork, and that is despite DCU alone having planning permission for 990 additional beds since 2019. This Government, specifically the current Taoiseach in his former role in further and higher education, categorically failed student accommodation and failed students across this country in what he promised them. Thousands of student beds could be unlocked if the Government was serious about addressing the annual crisis in student accommodation. That is why, in our alternative budget, we allocated €100 million in capital to unlock all of those projects. This €100 million would be good for students and parents and would take the pressure off the private rental market. It should be a no-brainer, but instead the Government has sat on its hands. We need to ensure that all student accommodation projects at advanced stages of planning are supported and that construction begins as soon as possible. Fine Gael has had two student accommodation strategies and both of those have failed. They have failed students, rural people and families. Every August and September we have the same student crisis in accommodation, year after year. We need the same ambition Sinn Féin set out for student accommodation last year to ensure people can access third-level education on an equal basis no matter where they live across this country.

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