With regard to the ongoing crisis in the housing sector throughout the country, I want to once again address the situation that currently exists in our third level sector with regard to accommodation. Tens of thousands of third level students require rented accommodation every year and especially in Dublin. The shortage of available property for rent has pushed up prices for hard pressed parents and as we all know, the increased rents has led to homelessness and a chronic shortage of housing among the general population.
I have proposed this solution before and I will do it again now. Most of our third level colleges have plenty of land on their property. Each college should build accommodation blocks for their own students and rent them out at a reasonable rate. They would be filled every year and the rent would pay back the cost of the buildings. More importantly it would ease the pressure on the rental market for ordinary people. This is a solution which, in the long term, would be cost free. I cannot understand why it is not being considered by the Government as one of the ways to ease the terrible housing problem that we have at the moment throughout the country. It would also benefit third level students and their parents.