Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 21 September 2023
72. Deputy Marian Harkin asked the Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science what measures he and his Department are putting in place to deal with the student accommodation crisis in Sligo, due to the withdrawal of two student accommodation blocks from the market. [40622/23]
View answerMost of the Priority Questions this morning relate to the crisis in student accommodation. That is a strong indication that there has been a failure by Government to plan ahead. In Sligo, for example, we had two apartment blocks that for ten years housed students. Then they were allocated for Ukrainian refugees. That has been stopped for now but the owners have said that they are not for student use. That is a failure of co-ordination between two different Government Departments and it has left students scrambling for accommodation in Sligo.
It is not that; it is grubby behaviour that should be called out as exactly what it is. The Government could not be clearer; the student accommodation in Sligo will not be used for anything other than students as far as the State is concerned. I am beyond disappointed that despite that message being clearly conveyed, private student accommodation is sitting, to my understanding, largely idle. I am clear on the planning conditions attached to that and I hope everybody is clear on that because we have planning laws in this country and they need to be abided by. That is student accommodation and it needs to be used for students.
I will come back on other issues another time but I want to be clear; we worked hard and the Deputy worked hard with us to establish a technological university in the north-west, the Atlantic Technological University, ATU. It is going well but a core part of this is having access to student accommodation and making sure that people, not just from the region but from outside the region, including international students who come to ATU, have accommodation in Sligo, and I know that is a particular concern too. I have agreed a protocol with the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth and everyone in this country wants to help with the humanitarian crisis. I am proud of how people have opened their homes, hearts, minds and communities to welcoming people from Ukraine but I am also clear that from a social cohesion point of view, student accommodation is for students; that is what it is needed for. We make it available outside of the time it is in use and when it is not needed but when it is needed it needs to be used for student accommodation. We have a clear protocol on that.
It is disappointing that despite so much work, the private market has still decided not to make this accommodation available to students. I hope people reflect on that and I appeal to their better nature to do that. This teaches me that we cannot be reliant on the private market. It is the best example of why we need to build our own accommodation and we have allocated, as the Deputy knows, €1 million to the technological universities to come up with plans for student accommodation. I can tell the Deputy with hand on heart that when ATU and others come forward with accommodation plans in 2024, the Government will be forthcoming in supporting and advancing this because this shows the vulnerability there is if you are entirely reliant on the private market.
I heard what the Minister said about "grubby behaviour". We will not have the debate now but it is my understanding that this is as much about a failure of co-ordination between Government Departments as anything else. As I said, we will not have the debate now but I will speak to the Minister about it again. I recognise that a lot of good work has been done by the students union and by the ATU itself in trying to get host families for students, and a colleague of mine, Councillor Marie Casserly, is helping to link up families and students. As the Minister said, we need to look at the longer term. The president of the ATU in Sligo has said that she welcomes the task force set up to look at ways that the ATU can borrow money to build its own purpose-built accommodation.
We need to see a real sense of urgency about this because we know all of this takes time. What we do not want this time next year, is for Deputy Harris as Minister, and maybe two years down the line some other Minister or perhaps even Deputy Harris, to still be answering questions about the lack of availability of student accommodation.
I take that point and I want to say one thing on the record of the House in the hope that it is helpful. The Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth has confirmed to my Department that no contract has been entered into with the owners of the properties in Sligo, which were previously used as student accommodation, for the provision of emergency accommodation for the upcoming academic year. In addition, the Department has also confirmed that it has no plans to acquire this property into the future. I say that to be helpful to everybody locally.
I thank Dr. Orla Flynn, the president of ATU. She is working extraordinarily hard on this issue and also on that bigger issue of student accommodation. I want to be clear that we want to see Sligo and the ATU being able to develop student accommodation. We want to see it happen at pace and that is why we are doing a project called "standardised design". As we start to invest in and build new student accommodation across the country we should be making it much quicker to pull the design if it works in Sligo, and then it could also work in Tralee, Athlone and Carlow, and we should get on with it. In 2024 we can make real progress in student accommodation in the regions.
We also need to look at short-term solutions. We have spoken about the long-term situation with accommodation but we need proper co-ordination and extra bus routes to help get students to ATU Sligo. I am pleased to say that a new Local Link service from Ballymote started this week but we need more. We need to look at extra services within a radius of 40 km to 50 km from Sligo. Time and again I have spoken about the need for extra services from Rosses Point, which is only 7.5 km from Sligo town, and yet people cannot get buses into the town. We have a situation where Local Link is precluded from putting on a bus on the same route and at the same time as Bus Éireann, yet the demand for bus places has escalated. We need to look at the demand rather than rigid rules about who runs the service. In the short-term, even that piece of co-ordination could work well.
That is a sound suggestion and I will undertake to talk to the Minister for Transport on this. I am not suggesting that this is the case but there cannot be any bureaucratic reason why we cannot all pull together to try to come up with short-term solutions. Digs and the rent-a-room relief are one solution and the transport issue is an interesting one. There is also the idea of a devolved capital grant, which would involve giving the universities, particularly the technological universities, a degree of discretion if they have an ability to do something locally, maybe on their own campus, or with any other properties that can be changed. That is something I am looking at in the context of the budget as well.
I am happy to keep in touch with the Deputy and other Sligo Deputies, including my colleague, Deputy Feighan, on these matters. I know how difficult this has been for Sligo and in the time available to me I want to acknowledge, as the Deputy did, the positive role played the students union in Sligo, which finds itself in a very difficult position. Students want to support the humanitarian effort to assist refugees and they do not in any way, shape or form want to get caught up in a them-versus-us discussion that was completely uncalled for. I welcome the fact that we have the protocol now and that we have the clarity but it shows how we cannot just be reliant on the private market for student accommodation.
