Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome to the Gallery the representatives of the Union of Students in Ireland, USI, and the students' unions of UCD, Trinity College, SETU, Maynooth University, DCU, University of Galway and IADT, as well as representatives of Ógra Shinn Féin. I hope I have not forgotten anybody. These people deal with the accommodation crisis for students day to day, and I imagine they could do with a bit more urgency because they are living with out-of-control rents, as the rest of society is. Some of this has been made a hell of a lot worse because we are dealing with an utterly dysfunctional rental sector. I come to the House virtually every week and read out examples of the rents advertised on daft.ie. As we all know, they are through the roof, and I do not know how anybody is able to afford them at all. Many of these rental properties are now not suitable for students, and that is before we talk about the lack of affordability in affordable housing schemes for regular families. All of it just compounds the problem.

I recall once upon a time, which, unfortunately, was a hell of a long time ago, when I was in digs. I think I was charged £60 and I got a breakfast, an evening meal and even a roll on Fridays when I would leave for the weekend, but we are now well removed from that. It was a fabulous service I got from that family, and I accept that many families do a considerable degree of work, which is absolutely necessary, and provide accommodation. We need to make sure there are protections for these people as well. We all welcome the tax relief of up to €14,000 they can avail of, as well as the moves that have been made to the medical card system and other such necessary moves, but we also need to make sure students have protections they do not currently have. We have heard about cases of students having being evicted overnight or having been moved into a room and then told they were going to have to take on child-minding activities. Some of them are not allowed to lock their own room and we have heard of people who have suddenly ended up in sharing situations where they did not necessarily know that was going to happen. We need to put in the protections and make sure it happens quickly.

In my town, Dundalk, there are DkIT and Ó Fiach College, and there is DIFI in Drogheda. A huge number of people need to come to Dundalk and there are significant issues in that regard. I welcome the joint activities between Maynooth University and DkIT and the letter of intent that has been signed. As usual, however, I have gone over time, so I will now desist.

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