Bríd Smith demands answers on soaring student rents and housing

Minister, I want to return to the question of student poverty and accommodation costs. I know Rome wasn't built overnight, but if you lived in Dublin 80, it's where that student accommodation built by corporate developers charging up to 1800 euro over eight months to live in was built overnight. It's all over the place. It's totally owned by corporate developers and very expensive so that only the very wealthy or overseas students can afford it or if they can't let them, they look for a change of use. What are you going to do about it? Where are we going to accommodate students? Because they are being pushed completely out of the market. Thank you to Deputy Smith. The first thing we have done is we have changed the law not once but twice in relation to student accommodation and in relation to student renters. The first thing the Union of Students asked us to do, and in fairness I think you co-sponsored legislation on this, was that they asked us to change the rules so that a student renter could not be asked to pay four, five, six months rent up front, which was happening. The law is now very clear. One month's rent up front and one month's deposit is the max anyone can be charged. The second thing the Union of Students of Ireland and your legislation asked us to do was to make sure that a student in purpose-built student accommodation only had to give 28 days notice if they had to leave their accommodation for whatever reasons, family reasons or whatever else. So we took both of those requests on board. Union of Students, Opposition Deputies, Government Deputies have all come to us now and College authorities and said the next step has to be a new model for student accommodation. I am not going to stand up here Deputy Smith and say that the model we have at the moment is working, because it is not. I am going to be honest that we need to put in place a new model and we need to have college-owned affordable accommodation. I outlined in my answer to Deputy Batchik how I intend to do that. We have set up a working group with the Colleges between the Department of Housing and my own department to basically look at what that new model looks like. My own sense on the floor of the Dáil is I would like to see a cost rental model that works for students put in place. I genuinely believe that can make a very substantial difference. What we are not going to do though is provide cheap access to state borrowings if we do not get an assurance from the universities that there will be an affordability piece as well. We have seen too much college-owned accommodation be unaffordable. I expect to bring forward a new model in relation to student accommodation in the new year. I have already told institutions to prepare their pipeline of projects. I will give you one example. The Technological University of Dublin in this city is always either the first or second largest institution in the state. It does not own one college bed. It does not own one student room. Up until now they have not been able to borrow under various borrowing frameworks. We are changing that from Housing for All. I am standing here saying we need to change the model. We need to build a lot more college-owned affordable accommodation. We delivered on the two things we were asked to do by students unions and opposition deputies last year. We will work with you on this too. I will not have to refer to college-owned and affordable because USI are not the only student group protesting. UCD student groups have been protesting about a 20% to 30% increase in the accommodation. They are charging for 8 months, €14,000. You mentioned the cost-rental model. I am curious as to what exactly you mean by that. In the Government's Homes for All Bill, they define cost-rental as 25% above the market value. If this is your vision of cost-rental, then all you are doing is subjecting students to the dictate of the market again, albeit 25% below the market value. I think the market value will inevitably go up and up and therefore the cost of accommodation will go up and up. You see, what I look at is the numbers of students from my area. In Dublin 10, something like 16% of all young people get to college. It is 99% in Dublin 6 and Dublin 4. There is a huge disparity. It is reflected in the wealth and the poverty of students. But it is even deeper when you try to educate people who come from economic backgrounds, where they cannot afford these sorts of prices and these sorts of costs and fees in books, in IT, in travel, everything that goes with it. Absolutely. In the time available to me, I will take as read the answers that I have given in relation to the immediate measures we are trying to take through increasing the Student Assistance Fund and the like for day-to-day costs and cost-of-living increases, which are real. You have asked me a very direct question. What do I mean in relation to the cost-rental model? A number of our higher education institutions do currently hold existing lands, and they are lands on which purpose-built, college-owned, student accommodation could be developed. In these cases, developments of this would unlock land which would otherwise be unavailable for the provision of housing. Further, the required specifications of student accommodation has the potential to make it more cost-effective than other types of development. The potential for access to affordable accommodation to become a barrier to access for education does create a social imperative to increase the supply of affordable student accommodation. In this context, there is an opportunity to utilise supports under Housing for All to enable higher education institutions to increase the provision of affordable student accommodation. The cost-rental model deployed by housing, with regard to social housing, considers costs associated with development, financing, management and maintenance. It models this over 40 years to determine a one-year rental value. They also operate a scheme known as cost-rental equity loans. Apologies, I might get a chance to come back in in a moment. On top of the points you are making, great plans and they sound lovely and all the rest, but I do think though that the model of cost-rental really matters. The one the government envisages is not good enough because it leaves people subject to market fluctuations. We cannot do that immediately, but there are some things we could do immediately which would help to alleviate student poverty. One of them is to scrap the registration fees. All fees could be scrapped and the government could cough up and make sure that we get the quality training, education and skills that we need for the future workforce. We need that in every area. It is way too expensive for people to do postgraduate courses. It is way too expensive for most of the cohort that I spoke about earlier to even go to college. Apprentices have to pay fees and we are screaming out for people to move into the construction industry to retrofit homes. These sort of exorbitant fees on training and education could immediately be scrapped, whereas the houses will take a long period of time, but that could contribute to being able to afford the accommodation they need. I take the point about the devil being in the detail on the cost rental and I am very happy to engage with the Deputy further on that as we explore the matter with the Department of Housing. I am excited about the prospect that this could be for a new beginning to student accommodation. I genuinely am. On the issue of cost and affordability, I have made the point that I have prioritised the additional funding I have received into my department into targeted supports in the first instance, student grants that have not been increased in over a decade, income thresholds that have not been increased. It is now true, Deputy, and sometimes this is not told, that somebody with an income of over €50,000 can now qualify for student grants in this country. Around 45 per cent, not much of half of our students, do access the free fees and are subject to registration fees. In relation to levies, we have abolished the levy to do a post-leaving course in the last budget as well. We are taking a number of measures and I accept you will argue that we need to go further and quicker. I take that point, but we have taken a number of very significant measures to try and address the issue of affordability and ensure that there is education for all in this country at third level and fourth level indeed. I love you! Thank you, man! I don't know that you didn't... Jasper… So, Giovanna, I don't know that you do