Students crippled by accommodation costs

THE quest for good quality accommodation is a major headache for students – not to mention soaring rent prices over the past two years.

Some students will be paying anything from €100 to €140 per week for accommodation. Therefore, rent for many students amounts almost to the sum total of their maintenance, if they are lucky enough to get a maintenance grant. This, coupled with the proposed increase in student intake in many of our third-level colleges, will see many students without accommodation as they enter or return to college this autumn.

The Minster for Education must consider the cost of housing and rented accommodation and the lack of a substantial increase in the maintenance grant for young people.

This was increased from €2,510 to €2,885, a pittance when you consider the costs involved. The lack of an equitable maintenance grant is crippling young people and making it extremely difficult for the vast majority to survive in college.

The minister must tackle inequalities in the rented accommodation sector before we see many college students waking up under a cardboard box.

Cllr Noel Collins,

St Jude’s,

Midleton,

Co Cork.