Student Accommodation
Dail Éireann — 2026-05-12
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Marian Harkin (IND), Sligo-Leitrim

I appreciate Deputy Scanlon's considered and reasonable approach to this. I am just as familiar as he is with the history, what has happened and the fact that we had student accommodation that is no longer available to students. A lot of people are extremely concerned about that. What the Deputy has said underlines the urgency to move forward with whatever mechanism we have to provide student accommodation in the shortest possible timeframe. As I said, the Minister gave that permission to ATU but it did not proceed with the purchase of the site and now Sligo County Council is actively looking at the site and what role it could play. It is great to see that our local authority is playing such a positive role in looking at the provision of student accommodation. Obviously, everything is in the initial stages so I cannot say anything more than that, but I can tell the Deputy they are working as best they can to ensure that student accommodation may be provided on the site through a private provider. Even so, I must insist we still have a long way to go on it.

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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