The Irish Examiner View: The soaring cost of opportunity

Students at UCC, UCD and UL are protesting over the increasingly impossible cost of student accommodation. UCC students want a 3% rent increase for college-owned accommodation planned for September reversed. UCD students face a rent increase of 4%.

Most students there already pay more than €7,000 a year to stay on campus. At the same time students at UL are protesting over the move to put two students in rooms heretofore regarded as suitable for just one person. The university says the move is unavoidable because of a shortage of accommodation. The move will add 630 beds to the 2,850 already available.

As those protests continue the most recent addition to a lengthening list of student apartments in Cork city opens for public viewings today. The Lee Point complex on the former Beamish and Crawford site on South Main Street offers 420 en-suite student beds across 62 apartments.

A standard room starts at €237 per week but hits €256 a week for a top-spec room. These are offered on a 38-week contract so the rent, for one student for once academic year falls just shy of €10,000. It is not necessary to be a maths graduate to work out that a family supporting, say, three students over three years must find €100,000 for accommodation alone. If all other costs are included that that figure might well double.

We have come to regard education as a right rather than the privilege it once was. However, these figures describe a situation where opportunity now has a price tag beyond the reach of far too many people.

Is it any wonder the traditional parties of power were so forcefully rejected?