Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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116. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills his plans to address the chronic shortage of affordable accommodation for students; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [51703/22]

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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My Department officials and I have engaged and continue to engage on an ongoing basis with the Minister and Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage and the wider higher education sector and relevant stakeholders on student accommodation issues including within the context of the advancement of the Government's Housing for All policy.

Accommodation shortages in the private rental market have impacted significantly on students this year.

Fundamentally, the challenge is one of supply. As a country, we need to dramatically increase the supply of all types of housing and accommodation, including student accommodation.

To increase supply, I am currently developing a new policy that supports the delivery of additional purpose-built student accommodation.

This will involve the State for the first time assisting with the cost of building student accommodation so as to ensure increased availability and promote greater access in particular for student groups in line with the National Access Plan. I have established a dedicated Student Accommodation Unit which will bring forward this new Student Accommodation policy as a matter of urgency.

I will be bringing this new policy to Government shortly.

Housing For Allcontains also contains a commitment to support technological universities (TUs) to develop purpose-built student accommodation where such a requirement exists.