A key Government plan for addressing the student accommodation crisis in Ireland has been delayed again and will not be published until later this year, the Department of Higher Education has said.
Announced in January 2024 to help increase the supply of on-campus housing, the Student Accommodation Strategy was due to be published at the end of that year.
However, it will not now be published until “later this year”, the department has said in response to queries from The Irish Times.
The Student Accommodation Strategy will “help build a fairer, more sustainable system, where cost and availability are no longer barriers to entry or progression through higher education”, the department said.
READ MORE
The strategy will “tackle viability” in the provision of student accommodation by using standardised design, improved supply-demand data for informed planning and drawing on a national survey of students’ lived experiences, the department said.
[ Nuns seek €10m for site next to UCD primed for student accommodationOpens in new window ]
The Irish Times reported last week that almost 3,000 on-campus student beds across Dublin remain unbuilt despite having been granted planning permission several years ago. This is due to high construction costs and a gap in Government funding cited by universities.
The unbuilt accommodation includes 1,240 beds at Dublin City University, 358 beds at Trinity College Dublin and 1,254 beds at University College Dublin.
In an effort to push forward some of these projects, the Government announced its Short Term Activation Plan in April 2024. This provided funding of €100 million to universities to help them build more than 1,000 student beds on campus that had planning permission but could not be progressed due to rising costs.
So far, the only project opened under the funding is 116 beds at Maynooth University, which Minister for Further and Higher Education James Lawless officially opened on Monday.
Funding for a further 493 beds, a €67 million project at University College Dublin, was approved on September 5th, but building has yet to commence.
Meanwhile, sources within the department have said students must be protected from regular rent increases every year under any change to rent regulation due to come into effect next year.
Changes to rent pressure zone (RPZ) rules mean any landlord who enters a new tenancy agreement after March 1st, 2026 will be allowed to reset rents to market rates between tenancies.
The reforms have been criticised as they would see existing properties rented by people who move regularly – such as students – subjected to more frequent rent reviews.
Mr Lawless is understood to be “engaging widely on the appropriate approach” to these RPZ rule changes in regards to student accommodation, signalling changes could be made to the proposed legislation before it passes through the Dáil.
Student accommodation is increasingly being seen within the Department of Further Education as a “mini housing department” in its own right, sources said, with protecting students from increases being balanced alongside the incentivising of construction.
