Students camp out in protest over housing

FURIOUS student leaders at the University of Galway camped out last night in protest at the student accommodation crisis – as they say ‘nothing was done’ in Budget 2023 to solve the problem.

They were joined by students and staff of the university at 6pm, most of whom made their way to Eyre Square, where they set up tents for the night.

It comes after this year’s Budget announced no additional supports for students who have nowhere to stay, despite thousands all across the country facing long commutes, sofasurfing or having to forgo or defer their college places.

The Union of Students in Ireland (USI) has criticised the Government for ‘pushing the crisis down the tracks another year’.

Three hundred students at the University of Galway have deferred their college places so far this year, and 92 of them have blamed it on the accommodation crisis.

Speaking to the Irish Daily Mail, the university’s students’ union president, Sai Gujulla, said: ‘The Government hasn’t cared. As we saw in the Budget yesterday, there was nothing to address the student housing crisis at all.

‘We’ve come to a situation now where unless people can commute three hours or live in a friend’s house, they can’t attend college. This has been going on for almost three years now, and we have

‘We’re pushing the issue forward another year’

told the Government several times to take hold of this issue, but nothing has been done.’

Mr Gujulla said union leaders chose to sleep in tents to ‘represent’ the living conditions some students now face.

‘We are trying to show what students are experiencing now,’ he said.

‘We’ve seen one student here who couldn’t find a house so she was sleeping in a tent. We’re trying to get that message across.’

To help with tuition fees, the Budget delivered one-off fee cuts of €1,000 for all undergraduates.

USI president Beth O’Reilly told the Mail: ‘We were really disappointed to see that there was absolutely no mention of student renters. We’re pushing the issue forward another year… What we would have loved is a commitment to introducing legislation that would put a cap on the price of student accommodation, or that the Government would announce a fund to allow colleges to tap into public funds for building accommodation.’