Government to tell universities to build more accommodation for students

In an effort to address shortages of student accommodation, and high rents charged by some providers, the Government is to tell universities like University College Cork (UCC) to directly build more such accommodation, the Minister for Further and Higher Education has said.

Further and Higher Education Minister Patrick O’Donovan was visiting Cork last week and was asked by The Echo about the city’s shortage of student accommodation, and the rents charged by some providers.

Mr O’Donovan said the Government had done “a considerable amount in terms of direct financial exchequer funding”, and he said he had signalled to the Department of Expenditure and Reform that further investment would be required.

He said he would be reminding the “traditional” universities, by inference those such as UCC, that they had the ability to build direct student accommodation themselves.

Such institutions, he said, “have access to the European Investment Bank, they have access to their own funds, [and] we know they have significant financial resources, and they should also be in collaboration with the city council and the private sector”.

Increase digs 

A graduate of UCC, Mr O’Donovan said he had stayed in digs in the city during his time in college.

“Digs accommodation is by far and away in a different space now in terms of the volume of people that are using it, and we will need more of it,” he said.

“I can’t say to you that I’m going to wave a magic wand and magic up 6,000 places between MTU and UCC, that’s not the reality, however, what I will be asking the Minister for Finance and my colleagues in Government, is to look at the tax reliefs that are available for the rent-a-room scheme, which has been hugely successful.

“We actually had a surplus amount of rooms in Cork at the end of the last academic year, so for people who wanted a room, there were rooms available, and we want to do more of that.”

He said while some people saw private sector involvement in student accommodation as “a heresy”, he did not. “I don’t see anything wrong with someone renting out accommodation and making a profit on the back of it,” he said.

Mr O’Donovan added that the Government had recently introduced legislation to prevent universities and private companies from charging students for 52 weeks’ accommodation when they are only in college for 40 weeks.

“Those extra 12 weeks [are] the equivalent amount of the non-adjacent third level grant, which is a huge amount of money… so we’ve done away with that now, and anybody who does that can be prosecuted,” Mr O’Donovan said.

“That Bill will be effective for this current group of people who are going to get their Leaving Cert results in the next two or three weeks and go on to UCC or MTU.”

Minister's commitment welcomed 

A spokesperson for UCC said the university welcomed the minister’s commitment to seek more funding for third-level accommodation.

“UCC has built accommodation that provides 1,536 beds in Cork which are consistently offered at affordable and below-market rates for purpose-built student housing in the city.

“The funding for some of this development was secured via borrowing from the European Investment Bank,” they said.

They added that UCC had last year opened its 255-bed accommodation complex at the Crow’s Nest, which was funded via a loan from the Housing Finance Agency, and the university continued to explore options in consultation with the minister’s department.