The Aparto student accommodation block at Montrose on the Stillorgan Road, opposite UCD, where the landlord has sought to impose 51-week leases on students. Photograph: Tom Honanoptions, Ireland’s third level students – and their parents – have been exposed to some of the harshest realities of the free market over the past decade or so.
Over the past three or four years, however, development activity has slowed down and so, too, has investment. There were just two active private student accommodation development sites in Dublin city, home to the largest student population in the country. Several factors have played into this crisis.
Instead, the minister relied on a derogation under EU rules, allowing the Government to bypass normal procurement rules due to the “extreme urgency” of the crisis. Underpinning all these issues is the fact that higher education institutions remain underfunded relative to their growing student populations, a fact established in a European Commission analysis of the sector in 2022. If the era of hair-shirt budgets has long since passed, institutions still face cumulative funding shortfalls with enrolment having climbed by 15 per cent between 2009-2016, while investment decreased by 12.5 per cent.
In response to queries from The Irish Times, a spokeswoman for the Department of Higher Education highlighted that the Taoiseach’s successor in the role, Patrick O’Donovan, had gone to Cabinet again seeking a funding package to speed up bed delivery. ‘We’re well past time just reannouncing beds that were given planning permission years ago, but for which a brick has yet to be laid’This week, property industry figures raised questions about whether the €100 million allocation over three years will be sufficient to bring the projects to fruition in the current cost environment. “Obviously, €100 million is a lot of money,” said one. “But the simple maths would suggest that that’s only going to be a part of the cost to deliver these.