Student Accommodation and Supports: Statements
Seanad Éireann — 2026-05-26
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James Lawless (FF), Kildare North

It is a great pleasure to be in the Seanad today. I look forward to updating Senators on the work of my Department, myself and the team around me, particularly in the areas of student accommodation and supports. I understand we might return another day to research, innovation and higher education, some of the other aspects of the portfolio. I understand that we are under time pressure today.
Further and higher education are critical elements of Ireland's economic growth, which is fundamentally tied to our societal progress because we do not have a strong society without a strong economy. This has been a core pillar of Government policy for several decades now. Our greatest natural resource is our people. It is a talent we all have, that is latent within us, and that we can unlock through the training and education systems. The talent and skills of our population are what we have to thank for progress we have made today in advances in the economy and societal resilience, and all the other positives we enjoy. It is thanks to the hard work of our people and their imagination, innovation and determination. These strengths, in turn, support the public good and fund the essential services we all rely on, critical things like education, housing and healthcare, of course. This is being built on a strong skills base and sustainable investment in education and in our students.
Many of the achievements and advancements underpinned by the National Training Fund and the national development plan, which are laying strong foundations for the future, are infheistíocht inár ndaltaí. I fully recognise that the cost of education remains a key concern for students. That is why student accommodation remains one of the most immediate, real and present challenges for students today. I recently secured Government approval and published the National Student Accommodation Strategy 2026-2035. This strategy sets out a clear and ambitious roadmap focused on increasing the supply of student beds, but also on strengthening affordability measures for students. It has twin pillars of viability and affordability, viability to intervene to ensure the beds get built in the first place, and affordability to ensure students have the resources to be able to rent those rooms and take up those accommodation offers. It addresses those challenges in two ways. The demand is projected over the next decade to stretch to 42,000 additional beds. The existing deficit is about 15,000 beds, which is contributing to unsustainably long commutes for many students. Students are spending longer on the road, bus or train than I or anyone would wish them to. That is where we are going to have to fill a shortfall of 15,000. Over the next decade, as we look at the demographics coming into third level and further education, according to the CSO data, the numbers in the secondary school population over the last five or six years have swelled. That will work its way into the further and higher education system over the next couple of years. There are demographic pressures at play here as well. As we play that forward over the next ten years, the demand will reach up to about 42,000 additional beds required.
Meeting this demand will require strong collaboration between the State, higher education institutions, that is, the colleges, and the private sector to deliver purpose-built student accommodation at the pace and scale that is required. I mentioned that the strategy is structured in two pillars, one being supply and viability. That includes the delivery of both on-campus and off-campus accommodation as well expanding the use of rent-a-room, digs-type accommodation. Pillar 2 focuses on affordability supports, ensuring students are supported regardless of whether they live at home, rent privately, are in purpose-built accommodation or are availing of a room in a private home.. It is giving students monetary supports to help them pay their way, pay their rent or digs, whatever their expenses are, as well as intervening at supply level to ensure we increase the stock of building across the State and get shovels into the ground as quickly as possible.
Recent measures, including the VAT reductions and targeted rent reforms, are helping to unlock developments that had previously stalled due to viability challenges, ensuring that projects with planning permission can now progress more quickly. There were several developments around the country which had planning permission secured but had stalled and had not got out of the blocks. We needed some kind of intervention to make those viable. We have done that using a number of measures, some of which are already beginning to come on stream. Some of the supply-side interventions include reductions in VAT costs for new apartments, changes to rent-setting arrangements for student-specific accommodation, and the introduction of more flexible design standards to reduce construction costs. On the design standards, I should say that it is flexibility without any diminution of quality. It is about high quality, best in class, using international comparators to deliver student accommodation, but in a way that is efficient and optimal in terms of the number of students per development, preserving common areas and interaction.
That is good not only for optimising bed capacity in each development but also for student well-being and mental health. Providing shared spaces, common areas and living areas is a good thing to do in any event. We are already seeing the fruits of the strategy slowly beginning to bear fruit. It is only six weeks since it was launched but we are seeing shoots beginning to emerge. Some 3,000 student beds are now under construction around the country and a substantial pipeline of more than 14,000 beds with planning is ready to be activated. We also have the additional relief through the rent-a-room scheme, with advertised student beds rising from under 2,000 in 2023 to more than 5,000 in 2026. That is effectively what we call digs accommodation. The number of beds has more than doubled in the space of three years, with some promotional campaigns and interventions around that to drive it on. That scheme has proved popular with homeowners who can now earn up to €14,000 per year tax free, providing an important and flexible source of accommodation supply.
Looking to our technological universities, they have also identified potential accommodation projects. I engaged with them over the last year to ask for submissions to be made on potential sites for campus accommodation where we could look to build out student accommodation. They engaged on that fulsomely and we now have a number of projects identified around the country which we can begin to target for building out these sites. We have also expanded that to the traditional universities under the higher education sector student accommodation programme, HSAP. We are now asking the traditional universities to produce the same set of proposals and identify sites, land banks and areas within their grounds where student accommodation could proceed. These projects are all being advanced on a phased basis, supported by a demand analysis, structured engagement with the development sector and financial frameworks to enable delivery, including, for example, the enablement of a nominations agreement for technological universities to enter into borrowing arrangements, which was not previously available. The technological universities had long sought it. It is now contained and delivered within this strategy. The first phase is being rolled out across the areas of highest demand, which are Dublin, Cork and Galway. It is the intention to move to the second phase as quickly as possible this year.
The average cost of student accommodation around the country approximates to €700 per month. That is a significant burden for many. I appreciate there will be some above that, and probably some below that, but that is the average nationally. In response to that, I am targeting a number of financial supports which amount to €176 million annually to assist students with accommodation and living costs. I have achieved that in a number of ways. I will continue to outline my commitment, which I reiterate again today, to improve student supports in a way that is equitable, sustainable and fair, and also provides certainty for families for planning for budgets, etc., year on year.
Budget 2026 was the beginning of a transition away from temporary supports towards a more permanent and balanced system, one that provides certainty so that students and their families know from one year to the next what is happening and what they can expect. Under the existing free fees initiative, the State supports eligible undergraduate students, who account for the vast majority of undergraduate students in the State, with tuition costs. More than 148,000 students had their full fees paid in the 2024-25 academic year. Along with that, the SUSI grant scheme provides targeted supports, with more than 65,000 students receiving SUSI supports in the last year. More than 44,000 students have had their fees, including the student contribution fee, paid in full, and another 30,000 students have benefited from higher maintenance grants because of the cost of living away from home. I deliberately targeted students living 30 km or more away from the campus, with additional maintenance grant supports in the last budget to make sure that those students who had the extra burden of travel or accommodation were supported through real money increases in their grant.
Also in budget 2026, I introduced a permanent €500 fee reduction in the student contribution charge, reducing it from €3,000 to €2,500. That is the first such permanent reduction since 1995. That benefits approximately 108,000 undergraduate students as well as 14,000 apprentices who also had their apprentice contribution reduced pro rata in the same way. I increased the SUSI grant rates by between €200 and €430 in different bands, supporting 30,000 students, and I increased the threshold for fee support to €120,000. Students in a household with an income of €120,000 or less will pay a maximum €2,000 in student contributions this year. As people go down the income scale, they pay less and less. Some 44,000 students did not have to pay any fees at all. Any student in a household earning €120,000 will have had a maximum contribution of €2,000 towards their fees.
There are a number of other measures, such as the 1916 bursary scheme, which targets students from disadvantaged and underrepresented backgrounds. The student accommodation assistance scheme focuses on dedicated supports for Travellers, Roma students and students exiting care. I have met a number of care groups and worked with them. We have the student assistance fund, which is now at an historical high, of just under €20 million. It is available on discretionary merit and is available to access offices in colleges to award as they see fit in their student bodies. We have increased the fund for students with disabilities, mental health supports and many other funds.
I am conscious of time. I have set out some of the affordability measures I have introduced in the current budget, along with the significant inroads we have made in the strategy I have set out in the student accommodation plan, which is now up and running and entering phase 1.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-05-26/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:59+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-05-26