Rónán Mullen (Independent) | Oireachtas source

The test is whether there is a human dignity-led approach to policy and legislation across the board and whether attention is being paid always to the most vulnerable in our society. There is a protest taking place on the quad in my alma mater, which has now been renamed the University of Galway, at 6 p.m. this evening. I commend those who are keeping the real issues on the agenda. It is not going to be possible to provide free GP care for an additional 400,000 people. In my view, people earning between €20,000 and €30,000 do not stand to benefit very much from the budget announcements we have heard in recent days.

As a member of the Joint Committee on Education, Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, I particularly want to address the student accommodation crisis. I spoke to a university president here in Dublin last week and he made the point to me that unless there is a subvention from the State for student accommodation established by the universities, they will have to charge students €14,000 a year to get a return on their investment where they provide student accommodation. If we do the maths and divide that by the number of months in an academic year, we get €1,400 or €1,500. How can people afford that? The current generation needs an awful lot more than platitudes. We have to acknowledge that the emerging generation faces challenges that their parents and the people of my generation who are halfway between them, the mezzanine generation, did not face.

It is time for us to reflect on the nature of our political system and the seeming inability of the Government machine to deal with problems that it should be able to see coming down the tracks. Since March of this year, it was obvious that there was likely to be a major issue with student accommodation this autumn and yet the Government seems to have been caught flat-footed on this and other problems. We have heard the horror stories. The editor of The University Timesin Trinity College Dublin, Ailbhe Noonan, brought to us an interview with a student who was living out of a van due to the unaffordability of student accommodation.

I realise that it is easy for me to get up here and point to the problems but I only do so because it is our job to continue to reflect on the inadequacies in our system and how they are affecting people. Issues with accommodation and practical realities such as access to good-quality healthcare are connected with mental health and the question of the resilience of our country and its people into the future. I appeal for a sense of urgency. There are things to celebrate about advances in this country but there is also a hell of a lot to regret and a hell of a lot of problems we seem very reluctant to talk about seriously in these Houses.