Colm Burke (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I wish to raise a housing matter that is not often talked about, namely, the progress that has been made in the provision of student accommodation. My understanding is that more that 5,000 fully operational student beds have been brought into use over the last 12 months, with a further 4,000 being built and approximately 7,000 going through the planning process. This is part of the long-term planning we need to do. One of the major complaints I have heard about planning in this country is that we build one part of the jigsaw and then come back to try to build the other part ten years later. What needs to go hand in hand with the expansion of universities is the development of accommodation. The Ministers of Housing, Planning and Local Government over the past three or four years have, to be fair, encouraged the building of student accommodation and it is important that this continues to get that support.

I would also like to briefly touch on an issue I raised previously, and one I was glad to see dealt with at a recent conference of coroners. This is the matter of unidentified bodies in this country and the fact there is no central database to record them. If a body is discovered in Kerry, for example, and cannot be identified, the information is kept in Kerry, in the coroner's own area. I am glad the coroners' conference recently held in Portlaoise agreed to a proposal for a centralised database, thus making information available to the authorities. In the last 12 months we had a case involving a person who had been reported missing in Dublin more than ten years ago, and a body washed up in County Louth three months later. It is only in the last 12 months that two and two were put together to establish that the body washed up was the person who had been reported missing. This kind of information needs to be available. It is important that we ask the Minister for Justice and Equality to rubber-stamp and move forward this proposal for a centralised database for all unidentified bodies. My understanding is that are about 200 such bodies around the country and it is important that this issue be dealt with.