70% of CAO places accepted

MORE than two-thirds of college places offered to applicants last week have been accepted, according to the Central Applications Office (CAO).

The deadline for accepting the offers made last Monday week passed yesterday evening at 5.15pm.

The CAO received almost 16,000 of the 32,000-plus acceptances on the day offers were made, but a flurry of activity took place on the CAO website in the final 24 hours. Almost 3,000 acceptances at either Level 8 or Level 7/6 were recorded between Monday afternoon and yesterday afternoon, although many postal acceptances included were among those recorded this week.

About 15,000 applicants who have not yet been offered a place on any course will now be anxiously awaiting the second round of offers, which are available from the CAO website from 6.15am on Friday.

In last year’s second round, more than 3,500 people were offered a college place, almost a third who had not received an earlier offer and the remainder given the choice of a course higher on their application list than one they were offered in the first round.

The CAO second-round cut-off points will be published in Friday’s Irish Examiner.

Places on almost 200 unfilled courses are still being offered through the CAO website, with applications open both to those with existing applications and those who have not yet applied to the CAO this year.

With the majority of the estimated 40,000 college places already filled, student groups have warned about an accommodation crisis, particularly in Dublin.

The Union of Students in Ireland has called for the Government to set up a student accommodation taskforce to seek ways of addressing the issue.

“People are being driven back to dingy flats because the place you can barely swing a cat in might be €400 a month, compared to €600 or €700 for anything else,” said union president Richard Morrisroe.

He said year-on-year rental increases of up to 12% in the capital are a big factor in the crisis.

“There has also been a change in the supply of campus accommodation by some colleges, giving priority to overseas postgraduates and researchers,” said Mr Morrisroe.