Student Accommodation
Dail Éireann — 2026-04-23
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Eoghan Kenny (LAB), Cork North-Central

In relation to the student accommodation strategy, the Minister knows I am not in the business of criticising in any way, shape or form any new development and I welcome it. However, I will call out certain aspects of it that I do not perhaps agree with. We might differ on that but that is fine. I have a sense that the strategy itself is developer-led with an enormous reliance on the private market. It fails in very basic protections in terms of capping student rents and ensuring service charges cannot be used as an excuse to drive up the rent beyond the RPZ rate. The landlords will be able to reset the rents in between the tenancies. I am just noting these issues.
A final point is that it is vital that technological universities have opportunities to borrow in order to purchase land to build or fast track their own accommodation for students. I raise those points because at the committee on higher education, a number of students from Aontas na Mac Léinn in Éirinn, AMLÉ, came in and spoke with us about that.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-04-23/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-27T06:54:48+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-04-23