Tax breaks won’t solve student housing crisis, says Minister

Tax incentives are not the panacea for solving the student housing crisis, Minister for Education Jan O’Sullivan has said ahead of the autumn scramble for college accommodation.

The Minister told reporters she was still awaiting the receipt of a report from the Higher Education Authority (HEA), which recommends urgent action to tackle a 25,000 bed shortfall in student accommodation nationally.

“I’m not sure if tax incentive is necessarily the best option but we will be looking at the proposals,” Ms O’Sullivan said.

“Obviously, Government as a whole will be discussing the whole area of encouraging construction of accommodation across the board and we will in particular be contributing to that debate with regard to student accommodation.

“But whether it should be tax or whether it should be other ways of encouraging that that hasn’t been decided yet.”

She said “one area I would emphasise is the rent a room idea”, where homeowners can earn up to €12,000 tax free on leasing out a spare room.

“I think that is an option I would encourage people to look at because we will have in the short term problems, there is no doubt about that, while some of the bigger proposals are being rolled out.”

In addition, she said: “Students should as soon as possible engage in the search for accommodation and not leave it too late.”

The HEA is advocating a blend of tax incentives and capital investment, as well as other targeted measures, to boost the availability of student accommodation.

It has also highlighted the fact that students and their families have only a short time frame for identifying accommodation because of the two-month gap between the Leaving Cert and the issuing of results.

The Irish Times understands that the HEA proposals will first be considered by an inter-departmental steering group before any plan is brought before Cabinet.

The search for accommodation begins in earnest on August 12th when those results are published, and CAO offers are issued five days later, on Monday, August 17th.

Meanwhile, the Union of Students in Ireland has reminded students and parents not to miss the student grant application deadline on Saturday, August 1st. Applications can be made at www.susi.ie.

Union president Kevin Donoghue said that "it is crucial that students apply for the SUSI grant but more importantly that they submit scanned copies of all the required supporting documentation required by SUSI, and any documents they feel are important for their case, before the deadline on Saturday night"