Student Accommodation Crisis

0:00And we're looking, firstly, at Ireland's deepening student accommodation crisis, with thousands of students struggling to find somewhere affordable to live as the new college year begins. Students' unions say the situation's getting worse, with rising rents and a shortage of purpose-built accommodation, leaving many students facing difficult choices about their education. Meanwhile, Claire's opposition TD claims access to third-level education is at risk of becoming a two-tiered system. Due to the accommodation crisis, it comes in the wake of the students. At the University of Galway, staging a sleep out and protest against the lack of legislation around digs accommodation. The latest figure show, the average year you rent for students in Galway in Limerick, was above 16,000 euro. Dominic Edigan is the challenge in Fain TD and says additional hidden costs are pushing more people away from third-level education. In some cases, what we're seeing is service charges, which in some places are actually separate to the rent. The service charges are going up and up and up and their hidden costs that you don't see. It really is the common now where we could have another two-tiered system of education

1:04where it's for those who have, and those who have not, are just not going to be able to access education. So, Donna McGatagin there and we're joined now by Emma Hogan, president of TUS Students' Union and even McCormick, president of UL Student Life, to discuss what students are experiencing on the ground and what they believe the government needs to do to tackle the crisis. So, thank you for joining me. Emma, I'll start with yourself at the new academic year getting underway. What are you hearing from students in TUS about the availability and cost of accommodation? Well, instantly the minute that the offers come out from the CAO, we've been getting inundated with calls from both stress-staged students and concerned parents. The first question is always about accommodation. As they go, is it as bad as their ten-years of it? And we have to say, unfortunately it is. In TUS there's no purpose built student accommodation, which means that TUS itself doesn't have

2:05an accommodation block or building for students to apply to, that is saved just for them, which means that they've to contend with students who are going to Mary-I and UL for privately owned students accommodation around the city or digs, which there is no real legislation on and there being just turfed out for small reasons that they shouldn't be. And they're just ringing up and asking is it as bad as it seems? It is, and it's getting worse and worse, and it's just completely unfair to students. Eva, I would imagine you're hearing similar stories and I'll be at this accommodation situation as MSS TUS doesn't have its own accommodation, but it's still, I would imagine it's quite difficult for students, hope to go to UL. Yeah, no, we're hearing very, very similar stories on the ground here. UL has the most unpurpose built-in accommodation per capita than any other university, but it's

3:09still not enough. It's still nowhere near enough. We are a university 20,000 students with 3,000 purpose built-in beds. We'll never have enough accommodation at that race. We're seeing students living in L, no first college course begging for houses, living further fields. A recent study we did showed that about 40% of our students are commuter students. Even currently we're talking to orientation talks and we're asking who is commutering and half the room of 1,600 students at the front of their hands. That's just absolutely ridiculous for students who are trying to attend college and just want to have the college experience that are traveling one to maybe three hours each way just to get the college. I mean, even if you're lucky to guess accommodation, the latest figures, as I mentioned earlier, suggest students in Limerick are paying more than 16,000 euro a year in rent. How realistic is it for an ordinary student or family to absorb a cost like that on an annual basis? I mean, it's completely unrealistic to expect students to be able to afford that.

4:11Because of the lack of it, the only ones available, they know they have them inoculate on it and they can rise the rents as much as they want because students are forced into these high rents. This is the ones who can afford the high rents either via through their own funds or through parents. But like it was said, it's a two-tier system. Those who have the ability to pay that extortion at risk will be able to do it. But those who are trying to from their own path through college, they're not only with the college fees, which themselves are a whole other story. But it's the accommodation and what people are doing is they have to turn down places at the colleges. Not because they don't want to do the course, but because they simply can't afford to live there. Without having to travel like two hours, three hours from places last year, I know we students who were staying on couches, staying in their cars. And it's ridiculous. There's struggling to afford college by having to work a part-time job.

5:16The Ministry of College, your interior work to be able to afford to live and attend that college. And if you have a social life, you have no ability to have that experience that was had in the past. It's just struggle after struggle luck. Yeah, I mean, either no doubt students in UL, it's the same story, commuting long distances, couch surfing, perhaps even hostels. And what kind of impact is that having on them long-term? Even those, you know, Emma's mentioned and some students won't even be able to take up their course because of this situation. For those who do, but are traveling long distances and couch surfing and so on, can that eventually wear them down? And they quite often don't see out the full course because they just can't keep that up. 100%. We're seeing a massive loan in this epidemic, even though, you know, there's so much you can do if you're actually here in on-camp, but you can engage up society, you can attend events. But we're seeing so many students who don't have the capacity to do that because the second election is done, they're back in the car, they're heading home, they're heading to work. Students are getting lonely, they just want to have the college experience.

6:18This is idealized dream that you go to college and you're away from home for the first time and you're making friends and you're going out every night. That life is dying because students will have the ability, the capacity or the financial support to do that, to go out to make friends, college to come, you know, it's come from being the time of your life to being the struggle to get to the end of the line and to maybe hopefully cross, cross over and get that degree and go to work. So many students are making it that far because they're just not fitting in because they don't have the capacity to do that. Yeah, I mean, I mean, surely there's a lot of pressure being put on students, academic performance, their mental wellbeing and as Eva has just touched on the ability to participate fully in college life and, you know, some maybe older people might scoff at that latter aspect, but that is an important part of college life, socializing and meeting people and, you know, quite often those are the people who have been friends for life. Exactly. And I mean, it's building those connections that are people with similar fields that are

7:19interested in the same things as you and it's such a community in college that people who miss out on that, of course, they feel isolation, of course, they feel lonely because this is supposed to be the time where everyone is sort of looking to their future, discovering their path. And if all you can do is head down, work to get through it, you don't get to have that experience at all. And it's completely unfair on students. It's, there's the misnames on this entirely and that's it. The ones who make it to the end of college, sure they may go on to work, but there's a lot who just can't put up with us and they're burnt out from the travel, the stress, the work. And that is a lot of the dropouts are people who are burnt out from trying to travel and the stress, the accommodation, it's completely unfair. We're also joined by Sean DeBurke, president of Cultist of McLaren, it's called the Gal of a Sean, thanks very much for being with us as well.

8:20And I mentioned earlier, students at the University of Galway staged that sleep out and protest over lack of legislation around accommodation. What did you hope want to achieve by the sleep out in Air Square? Well, we had three main asks for that. First of all, we wanted there to be enforcement on short term lets. I had been saying that there was one street just off Air Square and there's more lock boxes at the doors of houses on that one street than there are legal short term lets in Galway. It's like you can go onto any website for short term lets and you'll see that there are hundreds in Galway, but yes, when you see how many of them have the required planning permission, it's single digits. So there's a law there that already exists that will mean that more homes can be brought onto long term letting markets, but that law isn't being enforced. Second thing we were asking for was dig legislation. Currently, there is no protection for people who are renting in digs.

9:21So if your landlord takes an ocean over breakfast, you can be out that day. There needs to be some level of security of tenure there so that digs are not a risk for people to be renting in. And then of course, we were asking for a total overhaul of the National Student Accommodations Strategy because it's totally unambitious. It predicts that by 2035 there will be an increase of 41,000 full time students in Ireland. So they want to provide 42,000 more beds by 2035. But at the same time, the strategy itself recognizes that there's a deficit of 15,000 beds currently. And I really do believe that that is a gross underestimation. So even then, by the government's own figures, their only ambition is to solve only one 15th of the problem instead of the problem in its entirety. And based off their track record, I doubt they'd be able to even do that. We have seen new purpose-built accommodation in Galway, open at Queen Street Place, I think around 345 beds. Has that made any sort of meaningful difference to the crisis?

10:24Well, with that particular one, the cheapest option is 295 euro a week. So while it's helpful in the regard that there's more places that are there, it's an extortionage amount. What we're looking at right now in Galway is we're looking at more people coming from all 10 of the 10 poorest counties in Ireland with our biggest increase coming from the poorest county in Ireland to that being Donnie Gal, where we saw an increase of 25% compared to the year before from CEO applications. So we're looking at more people coming in who are from less well-off backgrounds while the rents are just going up and up and up. Like I was talking to one fella from Claire Castle near Nier Ennis there and what he decided to do was just commuter for the year because it was just costing so much for rent, he felt it wasn't worth it. If I just bring you back in, we heard Donnie McGatagin in our news bulletins. She's claiming that access to third level education is at risk of becoming a two tiered

11:27system. Do you feel it has reached that point? Yeah, I certainly think it's already reached that point in so many university meetings and so many different discussions. The biggest topic is how come introduced online learning like we had in COVID because the reality is so many students don't have the capacity to make it to campus. They're working, they're traveling, they're not able to actually be here in person. So how do we accommodate for that rather than looking at accommodation strategy or stuck looking in a situation where we can accommodate for this two tiered system that those who can be here and those who can't. Now when it comes to you well, we're currently under all of us 64 which means we can't build. So I guess the biggest thing that we have really is can we list section 64 or can we get capital development? Can we start tackling this problem from both sides to accommodate those who can't make it to campus because that's always going to happen no matter what world we live in. There's always going to be people who cannot make it on campus whether they're working or taking care of family, how about all this exists but we need to have a position where we can actually build development where we can have infrastructure being put in place

12:30for students and you can't currently do that. Yeah Emma, Emma, Donna has called for college fees to be abolished alongside action on accommodation and the cost of living. Would removing or reducing fees make a significant difference if students still can't afford somewhere to live? Well I think removing the fees would take some relief after students. I mean if that funds that they can set aside towards their accommodation, fair enough but still that still means that renters have to pay ridiculous amounts of money. People go into student accommodation, ridiculous amounts of money. I mean the issue is it's going off and off and I think addressing the college fees thing will solve parisabes but still accommodation itself is, I mean I don't feel this solving is completely no.

13:31It's just going to go up and up and up and there are people who don't have the bank of mum and dad to rely on and that's it, that's no matter what costs are involved, that's their college experience on the line. Journal finish which yourself, what the government's plans to address this involved involving private developers building accommodation and college land and leasing it back to institutions is that a model that A you would support and B that you think is workable? Well Charles George Parnell once said don't allow yourselves to be disassessed as you were in 1847 but now that's government policy you're saying how do we look at this public lands and put it in private hands? So I don't support it because what we see with these developers in the city is that they are charging extortion at rents. We can see on our own campus that when every time we get those private developers in it means that for you're being charged in massive rent because the nature of us is that during

14:36the summer if the university is going to be on the hook if there's any bed left empty they'll be on the hook for the rent. So as a result you are looking to make sure that you can rent it out to tourists during the summer so instead of building student accommodation built for students, you're building student accommodation that's actually built for tourists. So the result there is that you're getting something which is more high-end than what's needed or wanted and therefore you're going to be charging more. So it's simply and provably unworkable because that's what we're currently being dealt with. What we need is we need station investment so that's where the housing can be built. We need to be enforcing the existing laws so that we can bring short term that's onto a long term-living market and we need to be looking at where there's vacant and derelict properties which there is loads of across Ireland and seeing how can we bring those into productive use. All right we do have to leave there but I appreciate all three of you joining us on the show

15:38this morning that's Sean DeBurke there president of Coltis Namakla and Adultsko Nagolava and thanks also to president of T. West Junction in Emma Hogan and to Eva McCormick the president of UL Student Life.