Matt Shanahan demands student housing action after North Quays nod

Teachach, to start, I believe North Quay's funding decision is being considered by Cabinet today and I wonder could you confirm to me the status of that in your response? I had understood that Minister O'Brien was possibly taking leaders' questions today and I wanted to follow a line of questioning in relation to student accommodation. Essentially I suppose it is about student accommodation and what is being proposed for the future given that students have been left to a large degree, teacher at the back of the queue in terms of our accommodation crisis. Some students might have the choice of living at home and largely I would say this is in the minority for those accessing third level and at best it would be inconvenient I would suggest for families who have the required economic resources but for those and those who need to travel for education accommodation issues are certainly a personal life limiting event. The National Student Accommodation Strategy which runs from 2016 for another two years is a shared policy between the Department of Housing and the Department of Further Higher Education. Sadly, Taoiseach, it is clearly not up to the task. I look to the particular accommodation crisis in Waterford. Bizarrely, despite the forever in the future big big plans for Waterford's higher education sector, the Department's 2016 strategy models no additional student accommodation in Waterford, none whatsoever. WIT-SETU as it is now was at the vanguard in developing its own student accommodation with the college fields development dating back to 1992. Great foresight demonstrated by college leadership at that time. It prudently borrowed Taoiseach to build enduring public resources for students, resources that 30 years later now provide income to the college. In 2012, in the midst of constructing, the capacity for borrowing was taken away from the WIT. This is a capacity that is building accommodation in every other university in Ireland, in Galway, in Cork, in Limerick and Dublin. Irish universities at this time Taoiseach have just over €1 billion of debt, much of it from the European Investment Bank. Little of it relates to funding accommodation for the new TU sector, and at this point none of it relates to SETU. Taoiseach, will you commit your Government to revising the National Student Accommodation Strategy? Will the Government reintroduce a borrowing capacity to Waterford University, to SETU, and end the discrimination that is within the third level capital funding capacity at present? And most importantly, will you support the building of badly needed student accommodation in Waterford to allow the expansion of our college numbers that is needed, so badly needed, to end the brain drain in the South East region? We need student accommodation that is tailored to student needs, and to allow family homes that are inappropriately rented at this time, that they might be returned to the house rental sector and to private family use. I want to thank the Deputy for raising this issue, and you're correct, Dara O'Brien was to cover today, I wasn't clear as to what time I get back, or would I get back in time. Sorry? I flew through the night. So, we managed to get back for the Cabinet meeting, so then I took the opportunity to come in. Nothing of the sort, I can assure you. So, Deputy, just you're correct in terms of the Waterford announcement in the North Quays. It's a fantastic announcement. Minister Dara O'Brien did bring that to Cabinet today, and Cabinet approved the decision to invest, along with the local authority, over 200 million, in what is a groundbreaking project for Waterford in terms of North Quays public infrastructure, a project I pay tribute to the local authority, to Minister O'Brien and the Department, in terms of getting this, which is the largest urban regeneration project in the country to begin, paving the way for Waterford, I think, to enhance its offering as an attractive place to invest and develop new transport solutions as well, and I think this is great news, and I'm very pleased with that. Thank you. I take your point in respect of student accommodation, and I've been very engaged in this issue with Minister Simon Harris, and with Minister O'Brien also. The IT has never had the capacity to borrow, but now, as technological universities, they do. And there's a number of measures that have been taken into short term. So we did bring in a tax credit for renters, and that will apply to situations where a parent pays the rent for their child attending third level. And also, however, in terms of accommodation, there has been a big viability gap between what colleges could build at the cost that they could build them at, and what they could rent onwards. The rent would be too excessive for students. So we've been examining ways and means of how can we bridge that gap. And the Minister has set up a dedicated unit now, a new unit within his department on student accommodation. They've gone around to all of the institutions to identify are there short term initiatives that the state could take in respect of underpinning projects. So we're looking for some early solutions in respect of accommodation. And he will be bringing, Minister Harris will be bringing a memorandum to government in the next number of weeks in respect of this initiative. And then we'll have to look at a more medium term initiative in terms of students in need. Students with the SUSE grant, for example, there are state aid implications in terms of if the state intervenes to support the construction of student accommodation, we would need commission approval. That's been progressed. But in the interim period, we're looking at four potential sites where we could perhaps get initiatives underway to get badly needed accommodation for students. I'm glad to be. I'm glad to be. I'm glad to be. Firstly, it is very good news that you've confirmed the North Quays development. And I want to give sincere thanks to all the South East Rockhurst colleagues and to the Waterford deputies in particular, and Senator Cummins, but most especially to yourself, your office and to Minister O'Brien's office and to Minister Ryan, who have engaged with me constantly, to be fair, around this. And I think it's a very good day for the South East now to see this project developing. So I thank you for that. In respect of the National Student Accommodation Strategy, and I'm mindful of what Minister Donnelly said to me a week ago, that I'm always in here, never welcoming anything. That's not the case. There's just that we have a deal of work to do and we have a road to travel, and that's what I'm concentrated on. So we do have a lot of work. Waterford had an excellent reputation in terms of developing its own accommodation, which I say was denied it from 2012 on. And we've lost a lot of ground there. And you said in your response to me that Minister Harris was bringing a memorandum and that TU's could now have a borrowing framework. Could you just clarify, has that actually been crystallised? Is that the situation now in terms of that the TU's can now access capital independently under a borrowing framework to deliver not just student accommodation, they also need to deliver teaching buildings. So I think we need a more appropriate strategy, Taoiseach, and I'm absolutely committed to working with the Offices of Government in order to deliver that. Yes, that is my understanding, and that was a key ask in terms of, particularly to try and unblock the student accommodation issue. Some of the institutions have land, but the schemes didn't add up in terms of viability. And as I said earlier, that is what has slowed down a lot of student accommodation in the last two to three years. So again, the State has to get involved here to bridge that viability gap. And that's what Minister Harris is working on. He's established a dedicated unit. They've visited all of the universities, the TU's and the more traditional universities, and is hoping to come forward with some interim solutions, and then a more general scheme that would support State intervention to get more units built. Now, in fairness, there was about some 670 new beds provided this year, this academic year by University of Galway for delivery, I think later this year. So it shows it can be done, but it's clear the State has to get involved. And the rent-to-room scheme has been very effective. That's where people can earn up to $14,000 in rental income before having to pay a tax. And there was a lot of work that went into marketing that this year for this year's student intake, and it did yield some good results, and the institutions promoted that very strongly. And we're looking at other ways we can make that option more attractive. Because one of the issues is that we have a lot of housing stock that's not optimally occupied. And that scheme is a good scheme, because it incentivises people who might be in a 3-bedroom, a 4-bedroom house on their own, or whatever, and they can bring somebody in, and it's a good use of existing housing stock, and it's a quick way of getting extra stock in.