Students have been warned to examine carefully leases they have signed or are asked to sign in advance of the enactment of legislation to prevent accommodation providers insisting on 51-week leases.
Minister of State for Housing Malcolm Noonan urged caution on students as the Dáil debated a Bill which states leases will be for a maximum of 41 weeks on student specific accommodation unless the student requests otherwise.
It also prevents landlords seeking more than a month’s deposit in advance to secure tenancy and it allows students serve a 28-day notice of termination at any time from May 1st to October 1st to end that agreement, protecting them from having to pay for accommodation during the summer months.
A campaign by the Union of Students in Ireland (USI) and student activists resulted in the legislation being introduced when a number of student accommodation landlords charged for 51 weeks of occupancy, even though the vast majority of students are only there for the academic term.
The legislation will be rushed through the Dáil and Seanad this week with Senators expected to vote on an early signature motion, which asks President Michael D Higgins to consider the Bill within five days of its passage through the Oireachtas.
Earlier, introducing the Residential Tenancies (Amendment) (No 2) Bill Minister for Housing Darragh O’Brien said a “small but not insignificant number” of private student accommodation providers are operating booking portals demanding payments above legal limits to secure a tenancy.
He warned them “to immediately amend their booking portal to seek and require only lawful upfront payments”.
The Bill will also allow a student who switches courses shortly after starting the term, to break their fixed-term agreement until October 1st each year.
Sinn Féin’s Mairéad Farrell said the legislation should have been introduced much earlier in the year. “Unfortunately, people have already signed contracts and will not be able to avail of this.”
Ms Farrell paid tribute to the activism of “students, students’ unions and many others” on the issue which had resulted in the Bill being introduced.
The Galway West TD said she understood “the difficulty in making retrospective a new law such as this when we are dealing with contractual issues.
“However, it is essential that as many students as possible can forego 51-week lease requirements starting in September.”
Ms Farrell criticised the vulture fund model of student housing deliver and said it is not one that has “affordability at its heart. It does not have affordability as a feature at all.”
“If you want to turn student accommodation into an asset for investment funds, you build into it an entirely different financial logic, one based on maximising rental yields and minimising tax payment.”
She added that “the cheapest single occupancy room in the Westwood complex in Galway, which is owned by the asset manager GSA, is €8,502 for a 39-week lease but if a 51-week lease requirement can be imposed it would increase the rent to €11,118.”
Labour leader Ivana Bacik said that providers insisting on 51-week leases “is nothing more than gouging” and this increases cost barriers to participation in higher education.
The Bill gives “welcome flexibility, so that student accommodation will now follow the traditional academic year of September to May unless a student requests a tenancy in excess of that”.
She called for a reversal of the “trend of selling off State assets to the private market and of facilitating private interests in taking over and dominating the student accommodation market”.
The committee and remaining stages of the Bill will be taken on Wednesday before the legislation moves to the Seanad on Thursday.
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