Mary Seery Kearney (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome this Bill and commend the Labour Party, particularly Senator Moynihan who has been passionate on this subject. There is no question but that there has been a tremendous shortage of student accommodation. None of us has been untouched by parents contacting us. As there are Members of the Seanad from all over the country, we get a good flavour of the demands and the needs in the city. I also commend the original vision of responding to the foreseeable crisis on student accommodation while having a view of Dublin as a city where students live and bring energy to the city. That is a great vision for the city so it was right to set up a system to induce the building of student accommodation in the city centre. I had a problem with where it was built. In the Dublin South-Central constituency, there was a particular overconcentration of student accommodation at a time when there was, as there continues to be, a huge demand for residential accommodation for the local community and others wishing to live in the area. There seemed to be a disproportionate level of building of student accommodation in the area. I would challenge how An Bord Pleanála permitted this, at times, and how its planning process did not seem to give due regard to the development plan. I welcome the recent legislation, which has come through pre-legislative scrutiny in the housing committee, to address and arrest that non-adherence to the development plan and to the view of the city council.From that point of view, we are moving in the right direction.

A long number of years ago at this stage, in 2001, I was involved in building supported social accommodation in Dublin city centre. As an organisation taking a major leap of faith in the provision of supported sheltered housing, we had a fallback plan. In the worst-case scenario, we could convert the accommodation into a hotel. It was all individual self-contained units of accommodation or studio apartments with a view to housing young people coming out of homelessness. In the worst-case scenario and it all went pear-shaped, which it did not, that was our fallback because it was a major step of faith. It never came to pass and the accommodation never needed to be converted into a hotel. That particular facility is very successfully run by the Society of St. Vincent de Paul to house people. The hotel use was never needed but it was certainly a cushion to have the possibility of change of use as a girder to underpin our step of faith into something that was very big. We were setting up a housing association and changing a charity. We were not people of major means and were relying on a lot of Government funding. Even in that context, we knew that if we ever needed to change use, we would have a difficulty in that there would be a major clawback of funding and supports, if we ever went down that commercial route.

I welcome the concept at the core of this Bill, which is that we set up a bespoke system to encourage investment in student accommodation, because it is needed. However, it strikes me as peculiar that we have, as Senator Moynihan cited, a reduction in the number of international students, which is true, while at the same time we have a major outcry for accommodation from domestic students. This disparity and unbelievable situation are being put forward by developers, while at the same time the cost of their accommodation is so prohibitively expensive that it is out of the reach of most families where there are students.

Do I agree developers should be blocked from being able to change use? Yes, I do. I also understand there needs to be some sort of mechanism for a cushion when we develop accommodation. Every time the Minister of State is in the Chamber, I always reference the housing needs and demands assessment, but there is a need for metrics to decide. The metrics can come through, and be supported by, the colleges. There is a means of gathering the metrics of student accommodation needs. We also need to examine, through some sort of survey within the colleges, if there should be change. Students in other countries get the opportunity to move out of home at earlier ages. Should we be supporting and looking at that? Should we have some sort of task force within the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science that looks strategically at how we support students and whether Student Universal Support Ireland, SUSI, is enough. I know the Minister, Deputy Harris, is bringing forward a review, but these are all things we need to address within that.

It is not okay for developers to benefit from an accelerated planning process, tax benefits and all those associated inducements to get them to build and then, suddenly, within a year or two or less, in some instances without anyone ever occupying one of the rooms, they get to turn around and change the use. That is not okay. We need to arrest that rather aggressively. I understand the Government is not opposing this Bill, but we need to arrest that. I also understand there is a retrospective provision within the Bill that just will not work in law.

I looked up the advertisements today and there is huge availability. We have students crying out for affordable accommodation and yet there is this huge availability because it is overpriced and too expensive. One wonders has it been pitched at that level to oblige a situation for change of use. We need to stand against that.