Donna McGettigan (Clare, Sinn Fein)

Students are among the most mobile of all renters and will be disproportionately and negatively impacted by this new measure. I questioned the Minister for further and higher education in a committee meeting to ask what measures would be put in place to protect students against the impact of these changes. It was clear that students had not even been taken into account when the changes to rent pressure zones were considered. It was not reassuring that this point had to be raised at the committee and I felt students were never thought of in the first place. Students are also dealing with the accommodation crisis and they have to compete in the private rental market. Some end up in insecure and unregulated digs. While some digs and similar accommodation are great and help with the accommodation issue, some shocking and disturbing reports are coming from students of having no choice but to avail of these digs.

The Minister for further and higher education said yesterday that students should not be inadvertently disadvantaged and he wants exemptions to the new rules to be considered for students. Then this morning, the Minister for housing conceded it would not be possible for students or other short-term tenants to have special exemptions. This half-baked, makey-uppy type of measure, therefore, is just not good enough.

Children in hotel rooms need stability in their lives, not a Government that will leave them high and dry to grow up in hotel or hostel rooms. Three generations of families squashed under one roof need homes of their own. Children who grow up in emergency accommodation can be deeply impacted. Their sense of security and of belonging can be deeply affected. Parents are made to feel like failures because they cannot get a home for their children, when in actual fact it is the Government that has failed them. It said it has put billions of euro into housing and yet our homeless figures continue to climb each month, now reaching over 15,000. The Government did not meet its targets last year and reports are now saying it will not meet them this year. Will the Government tell those young people who have had to leave our shores it is doing a great job and they should come back and pat it on the back?

One question needs to be answered. Will the Minister of State tell the House what cohort of people is guaranteed under these changes to rent pressure zones not to have its rents raised in the next couple of years?

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