Richard Boyd Barrett Questions Private Student Housing Model

I mean, I'm still struggling to understand how you're going to address the viability gap as you describe it. Because you did mention, and I think this is the truth, is that if we don't find these other mechanisms as you describe them, then it's going to be rents. And of course, that's actually what's happened. Insofar as there's been private investment in student accommodation, it comes at the expense of rents that are unaffordable to huge numbers of students, to precisely the students that need them. So I'm just genuinely struggling to understand what these other mechanisms could possibly be, because either you reduce the quality of the housing, and I don't know if you have figures on average unit costs for purpose-built student accommodation to kind of give some sense of that. But can you reduce the cost of it? I can't really see that in any significant way. You're not going to drive down the cost of labour at the moment. I'm just not sure where these other mechanisms, other than the state stepping in, and essentially making sure the developers make a profit. At which point you ask yourself, well, why isn't the state just doing it itself? If the state has to make it viable for the private investor. Now, tell me if I'm wrong, because I'm just struggling to understand. When you're asked, is there international models, you're saying we'll have a look at it. And it's happening in Portugal or Spain. But I can think of very obvious reasons why there would be certain things that would be cheaper there. I can think of fairly obvious reasons. I think we're just coming back on the affordability scenario in international markets, rather than the viability piece in international markets. Elaborate. Well, the capital is going there. So that's a definite, that's one thing that we're comfortable and confident on. So we can read JLL or Knight Frank, you can see where is capital flowing globally. And capital is definitely flowing to those places. But you can't say whether it's affordable. I don't know off the top of my head right now, and I don't want to misrepresent what the affordability policy is in those jurisdictions. That's what we're going to come back to you on. There has been capital coming in here, but it hasn't there as well. I mean, like there was a rash at one point. Yeah, there was. It just disappeared. Yeah, but whether it was of any benefit is seriously questionable to me, because the stuff that they were building when the capital was coming in was 1200 to 1400 euro a month. And that is not going to solve the problem of the students that we're trying to find accommodation for. Like, that's my point. So even if you've got a surge of investment of that sort, it wasn't delivering affordable student accommodation. I mean, you know, like anecdotally, the students would tell you and people would tell you, yeah, that's rich people from Saudi Arabia. You know, that's that who were able to afford it. Which is not really who I think our student accommodation policy is directed at. Well, it's part of the solution, is it not, that the private sector will cater to the segment of the students who have the ability to afford it and other means of delivery for students who can't afford, which is absolutely expensive accommodation. I don't think anybody is saying it isn't. It's not all made up of Saudi Arabian students or international students, although international students are an important element that underpin our universities, our R&D, and in fact, revenue to our universities. And if we go back to the regions, the regional colleges, universities now are getting so-called marquee courses. So veterinary is going to Little Kenney and pharmacy is going to Sligo. And I anecdotally chatted to the colleges, they can't accept international students because they don't have any accommodation. They can't point to accommodation. So, and again, to keep the prices for our own domestic students down, so the university has an income stream, the international students help with that. So certainly we wouldn't see it as a binary black and white. It's a bit more nuanced than, you know, it's just for international students. Absolutely, there's an element of that, but they contribute a bit like FDI contributes to our economy and we've relied massively on it to grow to where we are. I think international students are in a similar and in fact, arguably even more so because they bring a cultural element and a cultural affinity to our country when they go back to their home nations. So a little bit outside my remit, but that's just. Sure. Well, listen, don't get me wrong. I'm for people coming here and studying from anywhere and everywhere in the world. I'm not for, you know, them paying extortionate rents and paying extortionate fees. And I think that would be the position of Amalie as well. And I just add, sorry, I don't mean to cut across. I might just add for a lot of those international students, their home governments pay their accommodation. They don't pay it. Actually, they get a grant from their home government to cover it all or a portion, not all of them, Deputy Barrett, but a significant portion. And in fact, you'll see student numbers from international markets drop off if the grants are curtailed or brought back for them. So it's a facet that their own their own home governments will give them grants for the accommodation. I think ultimately purpose built student accommodation is not a subsidised product. And I think we've seen elsewhere in the residential market that Creek on her, for example, and other interventions have come in. And I'm not stating that that should come in for purpose built student accommodation. But build cost inflation has rendered these schemes unviable, that they did stack up on paper. It's taken excessive amounts of time to get them through the planning process. During that time lag, the build cost inflation is such that it's a different situation. I don't know, is it that we go up and we allow more height, we allow more density. If we were able to get more density on these schemes, then it would then stack up. But unfortunately, the private sector and the role we play, we have to deliver a return. It has to stack up on paper before we can proceed. It's not necessarily personal that this is something that Kieran and I are insisting on. It's just it's just the way that the private market works. Well, look, we'll have to agree to disagree. I mean, I think there's hundreds of billions of quid in the Irish banks that could easily be used to build houses here. We don't need to go for foreign investors who want their pound of flesh. That'd be my view. But, you know, I understand, I respect where you're coming from. Maybe something that we might agree on, though, is if we reduced if we reduce the financial burdens on students, and maybe the students would say something about this, that it might put everybody in a better position, like getting rid of fees for students and reducing transport costs. You know, possibly even worked in Scotland. Yeah, you'd agree with that. I think our viewpoint in my organisation always has been that higher education is a public good. You know, it's an investment in the future of a country, investment in skilled workforce. So trying to treat it as a market that is put to the stress of paying, you know, twelve hundred euro for rent stressed out. You're making it sound like they're paying for a degree at the end of it. You know, they're paying to walk away with a piece of paper rather than higher education being what it's truly meant to be, a place of exchange of ideas and debates and exchange of knowledge rather than rote learning in order to pay for a degree. So you can try and build a future from there. Thank you very much. And just to add to that, definitely things like fee drops and anything to do with public transport is always helpful. And, you know, I know by a technicality, our fees decreased more recently. But for, you know, the students who were paying for them, it went up. And so it was it was a difficult sort of conversation to continually have. And then also another thing that is less far less spoken about that we're currently dealing with is that LeapCard issues. And so this is comes under the fact that I think Fort Knox is actually easier to break out of than it is to get LeapCards at the minute. Students are finding it really difficult. They keep getting no's on LeapCards where they're sending off their, you know, their LeapCard is coming back. And I understand and I can appreciate the fact that, you know, they're trying to make sure the people who need it get it. But getting sent, you know, asked to being sent their, you know, their timetable and when will you be off for Easter? And are you sure you'll be off for that amount of time for Easter? You know, it's these sort of really in-depth questions that just make those sort of things harder. So they're kind of, you know, they're waiting those first few weeks of college before they're actually ever getting their LeapCard. And then they've already spent a big bunch of money that they've been trying to save over the summer on transportation. Like I've had a lot of students say to me, oh, I won't be in college on Monday because I can't afford to go. I can only afford to go like Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday. So I can I meet you on those days instead? And I'm just thinking, oh, my God, you know, it can be quite difficult to sort of, you know, reason that in your head. And, you know, so that's yeah, LeapCards. Yeah. Sorry.