Conor Sheehan (Limerick City, Labour)

Sometimes I wonder what this country has against young people and, in turn, what this Government has against young people. Young people always pay the price: they paid the price for the sins of the crash, for the banks and for the property developers.

This whole calamity has been really badly handled. The Minister opened a can of worms on the radio the other week and unleased a political football that has, unfortunately, led to students, many of whom join us in the Gallery, being kicked around the place by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. Many students are being gouged. We have students on Cork Street in this city paying €19,000 per year for purpose-built private student accommodation. The bottle works student accommodation in Cork costs €18,000 per year. The panic and stress caused by the way this has been handled has been terrible. When the Minister let the genie out of the bottle, he should have grabbed it by the neck and put it straight back in.

We know - the Minister alluded to it and the Taoiseach said it earlier - that this country has been transformed by the power of education. The Minister's party, Fianna Fáil, has a good legacy when it comes to education but that was then and this is now. The Minister has an opportunity to have his Donogh O'Malley moment and move, as committed to in the programme for Government, to get rid of college fees. That starts to recommitting to €2,000 for next year and phasing it out on an annual basis from the following year. We have had report after report tell us about the hardship for students. One in five students said they are skipping meals to be able to afford to live.

In my city of Limerick, there are 18,000 students in UL. The university only owns 2,900 beds. The university purchased properties for twice the market rate and came before the Committee of Public Accounts last year with little or no consequence. We have students commuting from south Kerry and all the way down the west coast to Limerick. People are staying in hotels. We have even had people sleeping in cars. I live near UL and get a letter through my door twice a year pleading with me to rent a room to some poor student.

In the Residential Tenancies (Amendment) Act that was passed last week, the stuff around security of tenure was good but the stuff allowing landlords to reset rents to market rates will disproportionately screw students. This often feels like ideological warfare against the youth of this country.

Time and again I have been in this House and listened to the Taoiseach talk about the need to fund things properly.

The fact of the matter is politics is about choices. We would prioritise bringing down the student contribution over additional paltry tax cuts because we are fiscally responsible and we always have been. I urge the Minister to please put this all to bed because the CAO is closing very soon and students want, need and are begging the Government for certainty as to what they will pay when they go to university in September.

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