Following on neatly from the previous discussion, student poverty last year was rampant, with accommodation costs being a key element. Public transport costs and all the cost-of-living issues are now going to hit students. What is the Minister going to do about this? Will he consider bringing in free public transport for everybody in higher education? What are we going to do to bring down the cost of accommodation? There should be subsidies for student accommodation.

These are very small changes. We need to go a lot further. There needs to be a complete change of mindset. Accessing further and higher education should be seen in the same light as primary or secondary education. We want as many people to access further and higher education as possible, and we need to remove all barriers in order to facilitate that. We have the highest fees in Europe. They should be abolished. It is crazy to have registration fees. Only 30% of students benefit from grants.

Maybe it has gone up slightly, but the vast majority do not get grants. The new student accommodation being built on the UCD campus will cost students €1,400 to rent. Even as a temporary measure, all third level students should get the housing assistance payment, HAP. I do not really like HAP but at least it reduces the cost of rent. That is a temporary measure the Government could bring in for all third level students. Why do we not do what is being done in Germany, where public transport fares have been reduced b…

For some.

Although the student unions do not have all the figures, I spoke to them this morning and they reckon that more people dropped out of college last year than ever before because of accommodation costs and the cost-of-living crisis. That is their estimate. In University College Cork last year, there were record numbers of students going to food banks at the beginning of term. Such were the numbers and so desperate were the students for food that, according to one report, all the food in the food bank was gone in 48 m…

It is still a minority.

We will check the figures.

Last year, there was an absolutely dire student accommodation crisis, to the point where many students were paying up to €400 a week for hotel accommodation. Some could not even get that. What is going to be different this year? Student union leaders believe that we are going to face the same student accommodation crisis this year as last year. What has the Minister done, and what is he going to do to prevent that from happening?

The cheapest student accommodation at UCD is more than €8,000 for the college term. The new student accommodation that is going to be provided at UCD costs €14,000 a year. That is just insanity. It is not acceptable. To be honest, the Government should intervene immediately to ensure that students and their families are not being screwed with that level of rent. It is not that I am a fan of HAP but, as I said, a temporary stop-gap must be introduced. People should not be paying that level of rent. I would be in fav…

The problem is that rather than the Government making a decision that we have to have the necessary student accommodation to avoid a student accommodation crisis and to make it affordable, the onus is being put on the colleges to provide it. The result is that we are getting accommodation such as that being offered at UCD, which costs €14,000 a year. I made a general suggestion to the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, but he did not take it up. The Seamark Building, a multistorey building located…

There are too many aspects to count in this Government's failure to deal with the cost-of-living crisis. Possibly, the worst of them all is the really catastrophic failure of the Government to deal with the housing crisis that is gripping this country. It is a housing "disaster", as Fr. Peter McVerry rightly put it. That failure means that we now have more than 10,300 families, including more than 3,000 children, who are homeless. There are 120,000 families and households waiting on various housing lists. We also h…

Will the Government finally bring in some rent controls to control rents so they are affordable? Will the Government start to deliver the social and affordable housing that means people who are working and struggling can afford a secure and affordable roof over their head?

Why has the Government not announced the details of the review on the income eligibility thresholds for social housing and social housing support, despite a promise that this would be done before the summer recess? I will tell the House why. It is because the Government is terrified of what it will show about social housing need in this country and the cost to the State. The LDA has been in existence for four years with not one single social or affordable house delivered. I repeat, it is not one single house from t…

They will never be able to save and they will never be able to aspire to owning their own home. The Government has failed them completely and it will not even give these people eligibility for social housing support. It is obscene.

Which has not delivered one house in four years - not one.

The first house, six years later.

How much will the affordable homes cost in Shanganagh?

Buy the properties.

Let us have the debate before the summer recess.

Because of the Government’s failure to address the cost-of-living crisis, the Cost of Living Coalition will hold another protest outside Leinster House next Wednesday before the summer recess and a further protest before the budget on 24 September. If there were not already enough good reasons for those protests, the exceptional needs payment, which the Government has been trumpeting as the solution if people are in difficulties, provides another reason to protest. A senior citizen came to me yesterday. On foot of …