Catherine Ardagh (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I extend my sympathy and that of the Fianna Fáil group to the families who have lost loved ones on the roads in the past week. They include the families of Shaun Harkin, Mícheal Roarty and John Harley and of Jackie Griffin in Dublin. Our thoughts and prayers are with them at this time. The death toll on the roads is heartbreaking.

Dublin 8 is saturated with student accommodation. In the immediate area there are over 1,000 student accommodation units. Within 1 km there are over 3,000 units. Incredibly, some of these units cost up to €350 a week to rent. Show me a student who has that amount of money to put aside each week to pay for housing.

The real impact of the availability of student accommodation in these urban areas with great communities is that, by its nature, the population living there is transient, which means that those living in student accommodation do not get an opportunity to convene and get involved with the community, not because they are bad people but because of the short period they spend in student accommodation. This deteriorates and eats into the community fabric and takes away from the communities living there.

From a practical perspective, many of the student apartments do not come with parking spaces and we all know that many students have cars. This adds to the congestion. Dublin 8 has sufficient student accommodation. We need to consider the planning laws to ensure parking spaces will be supplied which will make it much more expensive for builders to build. It is a lot cheaper to build when they do not have to dig down. This is one of the reasons we are seeing many such units being built. I would like to see incentives given by the Government to encourage the provision of long-tenure housing in Dublin 8 because the area is over-saturated with and has enough student accommodation. We need to consider long-term housing solutions.

The third issue I wish to raise, and which I believe many Members will mention, is the impending nurses' strike. There may be as many as 40,000 nurses who are planning to go on strike tomorrow. We all implore public service management and the unions to get involved. I encourage the Minister for Health to also get involved as many patients will be affected. Public health nurses provide a service for cancer patients. Many are due to start treatment this week or are perhaps in the middle of treatment. It is important, therefore, that the regimes be stuck to. I know that emergency and essential care services will be provided, for which I thank the nurses.

We can only imagine how upset and worried patients are going to be in the next few days. I implore the Minister to get a handle on this issue and ensure this strike does not go ahead.