Mattie McGrath on Residential Tennisies Bill and student housing
Deputy Mattie McGrath addressed the Residential Tennisies Amendment No. 2 Bill, focusing on Student-specific Accommodation (SSA) and Tennisies Licences. He said student accommodation should follow the traditional September to May academic year up to 41 weeks unless a student requests a longer tenancy, and he warned that infrastructure failures are undermining student wellbeing.
Bill focus and position
The Deputy outlined that the Bill amends the Residential Tennisies Act 2004 to clarify Student-specific Accommodation and Tennisies Licences. He emphasised the Bill's stipulation that student accommodation adhere to the September to May academic year up to 41 weeks unless a student requests a longer Tennisies.
Support for private development and oversight
He said private developers have delivered many student housing projects and defended the role of private building where it speeds delivery. He argued that, with good officials overseeing contracts, private development can produce high-quality buildings and should not be dismissed.
Student housing pressures and family experience
The Deputy described the annual scramble for places each summer and called the expectations placed on young people unfair. He said students must be nurtured and supported, noted his family experience with children attending college, and welcomed Joie Hawkins from the Mann School in Clannmell in Tipperary into the gallery.
Infrastructure and water supply problems in regional towns
He warned that rural towns lack essential infrastructure - sewer schemes and reliable water - citing Cranmel, where a new university campus faces an intermittent water supply. The Deputy contrasted building costs in Dublin with the country and described a local gravity water supply near the Pearl of Anug being dismantled in favour of pumping, calling the choice hard to believe and urging infrastructure solutions to protect students and communities.
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I want to speak on this, as I said, the Residential Tennisies Amendment No. 2 Bill aims to amend the Residential Tennisies Act 2004, specifically in relation to Student-specific Accommodation, SSA, Tennisies Licences. The Bill stipulates that student accommodation will adhere to the traditional September to May academic year up to 41 weeks unless a student requests a longer Tennisies. Minister, it is all about mononoïge agus chuckie sheet, and we must do that, but we are putting so many opposites in front of young people, and in that vein I would like to welcome Joie Hawkins into the gallery tonight, a young student from the Mann School in Clannmell in Tipperary. But look, all students have to be nurtured and supported, and thankfully we, our wife and I have put our family finish going to college, our last school finished there, and this last academic year there in just a month, six weeks ago. So it's a difficult challenge, and you're supposed to know anything you have to live it to understand it, and the fear every year, from the time they come out of college, all the summer, and back into September, and scrambled in for places, and the expectation of young people is just not fair, in many ways. So we have experience at four different university cities, and, you know, some very good student accommodation providers out there, and we can never knock or stop private development, because without them we wouldn't have many, many facilities. I mean, I'm a big supporter of, you know, the building, and so for many projects, the building, the world won't come to me, but where the contractor goes out to private, build it and rent it back to the state or whatever, because you get projects done, get them done quickly, and if we have good officials overseeing that, they will always have good quality buildings as well. It's so important, so this, where this has changed here, private, private, public, private, private, don't be asking, wouldn't come to me, and because publicly we have failed to deliver. We had wonderful visionaries in this country, like Sean Lamass, and they left the road identification, and they were all the country, and many good people did, and up to the 90s, and even the 90s, we built buildings, but everything stopped. And the cost now, as we mentioned by Deputy Kenny before me, the price of building something now in Dublin, as it was mentioned today about the Sinn Féin leader, is not the same in Dublin as in the country. It's not, because the land, the price of the land, and the price of moving waste, the price of everything in Dublin, is much higher, much more expensive, and the price of labour is higher as well, because the cost of living is higher for everything. So, it is easy in the country, but we don't have infrastructure on the country side, where we don't have the, you know, the ready towns and villages that don't have the infrastructure with sewer schemes, and with water. We have a town like Cranmel now, with our new university campus, but we have no water supply. The one of the biggest inland towns in the country, used to be the biggest, at Lourne now might beat it. We have a totally intermittent supply of water, and I don't see if they give a toss. Water can be off daily or weekly, but it's off all last summer, and when the wetter summers we got, we're without water in our taps, most, every week, and many weekends. And it's so unsure, and we have one good source from the mountains, in up beyond the Cranmel golf club, up in Pearl of Anug. And what are our last water doing? It's a gravity supply. They're dismantling it. Stopping it. In there, probably 200 years, and they want to dismantle it, and pump the water back up the hill to meet it. I mean, it's just a beggar's belief that engineers or people like that would see this, and I think we're going to have to ensure that we have infrastructure for private people to build policies, and ensure that students don't have their worry, other parents don't have their worry around it. Thank you. Let's see.
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