Student accommodation: Just 116 of 1,000 ‘emergency response’ beds will be delivered this year

Just over 100 student beds out of more than 1,000 identified under an “emergency response” to student accommodation shortages are to be delivered for the coming academic year, an Oireachtas committee has heard.

The short-term activation programme was one of several initiatives approved in 2022 to stimulate the development of new student accommodation.

Described as an “emergency response” at the time, it aimed to build student accommodation that already had planning permission but it couldn’t proceed due to the high cost of construction.

Some €100 million was allocated in 2024-2026 to fund the 1,016 beds at Maynooth University, Dublin City University (DCU) and University College Dublin (UCD).

However, a committee meeting on Tuesday evening heard that just 116 are on track to be delivered for Maynooth this year.

Sinn Féin TD Donna McGettigan, who said students are under “severe stress” due to accommodation challenges, described the 116 beds as “just not good enough”.

“How long is it going to take to put in the 1,000 beds if you’re only at 116 in one year?” she said.

Paul Lemass, assistant secretary at the Department of Higher Education said: “It has been a challenging process in a very high inflationary context to get the kind of movement that we would have hoped on the short-term programme but we have 116 beds that will be ready for September.”

Construction is yet to begin on the beds for DCU and UCD, the committee heard.

A 2015 Higher Education Authority report estimated there was an unmet demand of about 25,000 beds, with key drivers being rising student numbers and a large demand for international student places.

While output was tracking “quite well” until the pandemic, with almost 10,000 beds provided until the end of 2020, “completions dropped significantly in the post-Covid period”, Mr Lemass said.

“Clearly developers looking at Covid got a shock and then no sooner was Covid over, they got a second shock through Ukraine and the cost of living and inflation. So we have undoubtedly been set back,” he said.

“Frankly, we have struggled to recover,” he said.

Asked what the unmet student bed need was now, Mr Lemass said the department is in the process of modelling the figure out to 2035.

The committee heard there is currently about 49,000 purpose-built student accommodation beds across the country, 16,000 of which are publicly owned.

“We absolutely recognise that there’s a shortfall in accommodation,” Mr Lemass said.

Separately, Mr Lemass told committee members the department expects approximately 1,800 beds to return to the student accommodation sector this year.

The beds were previously used to accommodate international protection applicants and Ukrainian refugees and are expected to return to the sector following a recent review of accommodation contracts by the Department of Children.

While there was a need for flexibility, “given pressures in other sectors”, Mr Lemass acknowledged it was “very disappointing” when properties are taken out of the student accommodation sector for other purposes.