Student Accommodation and Supports: Statements
Seanad Éireann — 2026-05-26
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Anne Rabbitte (FF), Nominated by the Taoiseach

I thank the Minister for being here in the House this evening. I will start by seconding everything Senator Dee Ryan said. She gave a comprehensive overview of the work the Minister has done and I want to put on record my support for that.
In the two minutes or one minute and 45 seconds I have left, I will focus on student accommodation. I thank the Minister for responding to me last week when I was in a flurry. The Minister I am talking to is continuously responding, and I want to acknowledge that. While I accept the strategy has developed, I do have concerns about it. I am really worried. Three thousand are in building, 14,000 have planning permissions but there is 42,000 of a need. We need to be bold, ambitious and pragmatic. The Minister is the Minister responsible but I do not think he can do it on his own. He needs the help of the Ministers for housing, public expenditure and reform and Finance, who need to come to the table. The Minister needs to convene a round-table consultation on this.
While nobody wants to talk about rent pressure zones, I think we should have student pressure zones. We should have student caps. I would go as far as saying that not everybody will be able to afford shiny and new when shiny and new arrives. Shiny and new is costing a minimum of €1,100 to every parent at the moment. That is the starting point, going all the way up to €1,480. I can talk about it. I had three children in college last year so I am living proof of it. My sister is in exactly the same position. We want to give our children the best but it is actually quite expensive to do it.
What I would say in relation to the rent cap is we might bring a lot of people in out of the black market. Maybe we should work with our student unions, where we could use an ID to be able to cap a bed. We also need to look at the income tax earned for those beds. Maybe we should look at removing that income tax so we can free up those beds. The reason I talk about those beds in our inner cities and main towns - and I am talking about Galway - is that we want to ensure our students can walk safely to and from college. Finally, stamp duty and capital gains need to be looked, and that is for the Departments of Finance and public expenditure and reform.

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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