Students AT Trinity College Dublin have threatened to picket the college's accommodation offices and to jam their phone lines over the summer if the college goes ahead with a plan to increase rents by 18 per cent.

The students claim that college originally planned to raise rents across the board by 20.7 per cent. Students' union president Adrian Langan says the union succeeded in having the proposal taken off the agenda of the last meeting of the college board, but that the matter will come up again tomorrow week.

Students currently pay between £1,394 and £1,742 per academic year, not including the cost of light and heat. A new £30 million development, to be half-funded by an anonymous private benefactor, will add another 368 single bedrooms. Reports suggest that the basic rent charged for these rooms will be £60 per week - a third more than the maximum maintenance grant available to students.

Langan says students are going "off the head" about the proposed new rent levels. Applications were to open yesterday for college accommodation for next year; the union said last week that the college would not be able to say with certainty what rent would be charged for the rooms before it started accepting applications.

Meanwhile, the union council has mandated its executive to take any action necessary to prevent the proposed rent increases. Langan says this could include picketing and phone-jamming during the tourist season. The first phase of the new student residences, to be built on the playing fields facing on to Dartry Road in Rathgar, Dublin, will contain 368 single bedrooms, most of them ensuite. The rooms will be used mostly for freshers, overseas and full-fees students.

TCD's provost, Dr Tom Mitchell, said earlier this month that the Government provides only 30 per cent of the money for capital projects and that the State's contribution to current spending is also declining from 64 per cent four years ago to 53 per cent last year.

TCD's building programme includes a £20 million sports centre, with "residential and other facilities" on the top floor. A rumour has spread among students that the centre, which is paid for by an extra capitation fee collected from the students, will be a kind of hotel. Trinity News has already dubbed the development "Trinity Towers".

Trinity's accommodation office was not able to make a spokesperson available to answer the students' concerns.