Student Accommodation
Dail Éireann — 2026-05-12
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James Lawless (FF), Kildare North

I am aware of the Deputy's interest in this. I am pleased to be able to advise the Deputy that I have met the presidents of both UCC and MTU on a number of occasions. I have also visited both institutions on a number of occasions and, indeed, I will do so again this week.
I am very aware of how the supply and affordability of accommodation is impacting students in Cork and more generally across the country. That is one of the reasons I was very pleased to be able to publish the national student accommodation strategy, which sets out the pathway to make higher education more accessible by addressing two critical challenges. There are two pillars of that strategy, as the Deputy is probably aware. One is the viability challenge and incentivising the development at scale of student accommodation and large, high-quality student developments, ideally on campus lands or in and around campus. This will be supported through the strategy and through a number of measures within it. There is also a focus on affordability, with €176 million in new supports being placed in things like the maintenance grants for non-adjacent students and a range of other measures to make it somewhat more affordable for students to be able to pay their rents, effectively, in the different developments. Of course, both MTU and UCC have been engaged in that with me and my officials.
My Department held a briefing for both universities very recently to walk through the new student strategy and explain how that is going to work. Part of that is the extension of what was a TU, accommodation programme across the traditional universities and what we are calling the higher education institutions student accommodation programme, HSAP. That has been up and running now since we launched the strategy. I am pleased to advise the Deputy that there are three locations being targeted in the first wave, namely, Dublin, Galway and Cork. Cork is up and running already. We have had extensive engagement and we have had a number of inquiries coming in already.
That is going well. It is something I am keen to move on at all possible expedition to ensure we begin to deliver those much-needed beds for the students.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-05-12/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-27T06:54:49+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-05-12