2026-01-29

82. Deputy Donna McGettigan asked the Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science when the student accommodation strategy will be released, and whether it will contain proposals to allow the providers of private student accommodation to hike rents more often than for those in purpose-built student accommodation; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [7343/26]

When will the student accommodation strategy be released? Will it contain proposals to allow the providers of private student accommodation to hike rents more often than those in purpose-built student accommodation?

I intend to publish the national student accommodation strategy in the coming weeks. The strategy will support access to suitable housing for full-time students in publicly funded higher education institutions and aims to deliver additional student beds to meet projected demand out to 2035, without the need to have additional recourse to the private rental market. The aim behind the student accommodation strategy is to address the student accommodation requirements relating to purpose-built student accommodation without imposing additional pressures - the idea is to relieve such pressures - on the wider private residential sector. The provisions relating to tenancy legislation fall under the remit of my colleague the Minister for housing, Deputy Browne. His Department sets the rules and implements the legislation relating to rent, rent resets and so forth. I have worked closely with the Minister to ensure that the legislation relating to the new rent pressure zones, RPZs, which was published on Tuesday, having been approved by the Cabinet, contains a provision to protect students by means of a three-year moratorium on rent resets within purpose-built student accommodation. As a result, we will avoid the scenario that was feared by many, including me, of an annual reset as students left their accommodation each summer. It would have been unfair to have such students facing rent resets. The legislation was predicated on the end of a tenancy. For student accommodation, we have predicated it on the property, which means that regardless of how many students come and go - and I expect that there will be a group of students coming in each year and that they will be replaced by another set of students the following year - they will not be facing annual resets. There will be a three-year moratorium for all those students in the purpose-built student accommodation sector. That is important, and I thank the Minister for housing for taking my submissions on board. We had detailed engagements on this matter and, as a result, that protection will be built in. As well as rent protections, there are significant supports in terms of affordability. This was one of the reasons why I increased all the non-adjacent maintenance grants in the budget, thereby assisting 30,000 students and bringing the total allocation for the non-adjacent student grant to €146.5 million. There are also things like rent-a-room relief, the student assistance fund and significant other funding I have put in place for students in order to help them to meet their accommodation needs.

On 6 February 2025, the Minister announced that a new student accommodation strategy was in development, which would be completed in 2025. We were then told that the much-awaited strategy would be delivered in quarter 4 of 2025. We are now in 2026. While we are told the strategy will be published in the coming weeks, we still do not have a definitive date and the gap between strategies is growing further apart. From March, student-specific accommodation providers will be able to reset rents to market value, and every three years thereafter. Is that correct? While it is welcome that these rent hikes will be attached to the property rather than the tenant, is it fair that students are being unfairly targeted for more rent hikes than others? While I welcome the rise in extra payments to help them, it simply is not enough. We know the majority of students rent from the private market. What protections is the Minister fighting for to be put in place for these students who, as we know, renew their lease on an annual basis?

I do not know whether the Deputy listened to my answer but that is exactly what I just talked about. I know she has probably prepared a script but I will reiterate and repeat what I said a minute ago. Working with my colleague, the Minister, Deputy Browne, I have secured protections for students in purpose-built student accommodation to ensure they do not have that annual rent reset every year. I wish to be crystal clear for the benefit of the House and everyone listening: I have secured a three-year protection window for students in order that they will not be facing rent resets until 2029 at the earliest, that is, three years from now. The original situation that was put forward in the rental Bill - I appreciate it applies to the wider residential rental market - talked about rents being reset when a tenant left. We were all students once and we know that the nature of student accommodation is that students typically leave every summer. It would, therefore, have been unfair and unduly adverse on those students to have those same rules. I have managed to negotiate with the Minister, Deputy Browne, and ensure they do not have those same rules. In fact, they have a three-year protection window. The reset will be allowed on the student property in three-year cycles rather than when the tenancy ends. That is a significant achievement. I talked to AMLÉ and other student groups about it in advance. I hope the Deputy will welcome it.

As I said, it is welcome that the rent hikes will be attached to the property rather than the tenants but the Minister is talking in the context of purpose-built student accommodation. What about those in private accommodation such as digs and private homes? Will they get any protection? We know housing is one of the biggest costs in a student's life, and the majority of students are in the private rental market. While rents are already unaffordable, if we continue to rely on private rental supply, rents will continue to increase to the point where they will push young people away from attending college because they simply cannot get student accommodation or afford it. What will be put in place for those in private accommodation?

Students living in the private residential sector have the same rules as anyone else living in that sector. This is something I have looked at and discussed with the Minister, Deputy Browne. I have a limited remit because the Minister for housing and the Department of housing have full control over the rental rules and landlord and tenant legislation. I make submissions and I have engagement with them, as I successfully did in the case of purpose-built student accommodation, PBSA. With regard to the private residential sector, there are challenges in trying to come up with student-specific rules for houses in which students might be living. To take a typical three-bed, semi-detached house in one of the university towns as an example, of which there are many in Maynooth in my constituency as well as all around the country, how can it become a student house if four people are living there, two of whom are students and the other two are working? What happens if there are three people in a house and one of them is doing a course at night? Similarly, I refer to houses in which there are a couple of student doctors or teachers on their first year of placement. Are they student houses or not? I will be publishing my strategy in the coming weeks. I would have liked to have published it by now but it is complex with regard to the rules. I have implemented a number of the measures within it already, such as the increase in grants that I spoke about to help with affordability. Purpose-built student accommodation is the sector I will be focusing all my efforts on to deliver more beds.