The Higher Education Minister says multi million euro plans to lessen the reliance on the private rental market for students will be brought to cabinet in "the coming days".
Simon Harris was speaking in Bishopstown yesterday where he said that the cost of accommodation is one of the biggest challenges facing students in Cork.
The Minister says the plans will provide funding for Third Level Institutes for the first time to make it more viable for them to build their own accommodation.
The plan will be initially aimed at universities that have active planning permission and will be extended to the likes of Technical Universities after that.
Speaking to RedFM News, Minister Simon Harris says there are five universities in Ireland with planning permission who have not started building:
"They found that the current model isn't viable. I'm trying to step in here and see if we can make it viable, quite frankly. The second piece then will be to look at the technological universities, who again, through no fault of their own, have never been able to borrow, had to build student accommodation. So what was cit? Are it truly, they've never built any student accommodation because they were never able to access the borrowing framework, allowed to be intensively engaging with them to try and get their projects in in 2023. The quickest progress that can be made here is on the universities that have planning permission and can get going very quickly."
