Six locations in the city centre have been shortlisted with “promise” or “likelihood” for student accommodation, according to Trinity College’s Dean of Students Professor Kevin O’Kelly.
Trinity College established an “accommodation steering group” over a year ago to help combat the student accommodation crisis in Dublin. This group is currently chaired by the Provost, with the Chief Operating Officer, the Chief Financial Officer, the Bursar, the Students’ Union Welfare Officer and Kevin O’Kelly.
Regarding accommodation currently available to Trinity students, Trinity Hall boasts over a thousand residential rooms on campus, facilitating rough 6000 students. However, this only merely contributes to resolving the issue of lack of student accommodation in Dublin, as just under 17’000 students study at Trinity College.
Here in DCU there are 246 residential rooms on campus, catering for roughly 1,230 students. This gives about 10% of the student body a place to live for the academic year. Although there is no “accommodation steering group” like Trinity College, there are properties located nearby to help accommodate students such as Gateway, Shanowen and Hazelwood.
The student accommodation crisis has been a major issue for the past few years due to a culmination of lack of property and an increase in rent fees. To have six new properties dedicated to housing Trinity College students would be highly advantageous. It would also be a persuasive factor for attracting international students, as the Irish Universities Association said that “the availability of campus accommodation is a prerequisite for attracting new overseas students”.
Michelle Townsend
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