Limerick students staying in hotels due to shortage of accommodation
Students, including some who have travelled from abroad to study in the Limerick, say the Government and universities need to step up to solve the housing crisis and meet demand for affordable and suitable housing. File picture: Dan Linehan
A number of students in Limerick have been forced to hole up in hotels because of a lack of student accommodation in the city and its suburbs.
Students, including some who have travelled from abroad to study in the Treaty City, say the Government and universities need to step up to solve the housing crisis and meet demand for affordable and suitable housing.
An international student who flew to Limerick on September 5 to take up a course at University of Limerick (UL) on September 6, and who has been staying in a hotel in the city centre, said they wanted “to highlight the shocking state of homelessness” among the Limerick student population.
They are paying €370 a week in “a city centre hotel”, due to the "chronic shortage" of accommodation in the city and on campus, and fear this will have a long-term impact on their studies.
They complained they could not open an Irish bank account or apply for student travel or discount cards as they “do not have a stable address”.
They said they “appealed to the president of the university to assist... in securing permanent accommodation, but this has not produced any successful outcome to house us permanently.”.
The student said when they sought advice from UL they were told “we had to continue to be on a waitlist for on-campus accommodation with no timeline of when we would hear an outcome and to continue to search local renting websites”.
The student said they had been contacting landlords for weeks about potential viewings or places to stay but have had no success yet.
“To make matters worse, they are taking in more students starting on Monday 13th September. Where these students will be housed is unclear,” they added.
UL has invested in 2,800 rooms across seven on-campus residential villages with “something to suit everyone”, its website states.
The UL website advises students that finding accommodation is “extremely important”.
The website announced that lottery applications for accommodation for “incoming CAO First Year” students for the 2021/2022 academic year, had closed on March 31 this year.
“Those unsuccessful in the lottery have been automatically placed on our wait list. Should we receive cancellations, rooms will be offered to this waitlist on a lottery basis. Please note that we do not guarantee you will be offered a room,” the notice reads.
The website added that students who did not apply for the lottery were able to “register and apply for a secondary waitlist on September 7, 2021”.
Students are advised on the website a number of times that the university cannot guarantee students will be offered a room under the lottery system.
UL has been asked for a response.
Other colleges are also affected, though.
Ryan Parsons from Cork is returning to college in Limerick Institute of Technology (LIT) as a mature student, and has been searching for accommodation for over two months.
“I was lucky to even get a viewing for that particular room as over 250 emails came in from people applying for a viewing,” he said.
The 28-year-old, who is pursuing music and sound technology in LIT, has not received a timetable yet for his course, which adds to the uncertainty of whether or not it will be possible for him to commute.
“I’m due to be starting college on September 28, but no itineraries have been given, we’re totally in the dark. If I was in two days a week, I would nearly just commute from Cork to Limerick.
“I was hoping to get rid of my car as it’s just another expense, but I’ll have to hang on to it until I can try sort accommodation.
“Commuting to college is certainly not ideal, it’s an extra three hours travelling on to your day, between college work and working a job, you would be wrecked on top of it all,” he said.
Meanwhile, students at Mary Immaculate College have struck a deal with three Limerick city hotels to accommodate some of its students for a weekly fee of up to €390, according to RTÉ.
The teacher training college said it was the first time it has had to do this for students returning after the summer break, and that it had reached a similar deal with a hotel in Thurles, Co Tipperary, where it has a smaller campus.
In a statement to RTÉ, the college said the situation was “not ideal” but that it had no other option.
It said one key factor was remote learning due to the Covid-19 pandemic, that many students had not rented accommodation, and that, in the meantime, many houses that used to be available to students had been taken out of the market by others.
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