{"id":233369,"date":"2026-01-08T01:43:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-08T01:43:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/233369\/"},"modified":"2026-01-08T01:43:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-08T01:43:07","slug":"one-bed-en-suites-for-students-wasteful-says-minister-for-higher-education-james-lawless-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/233369\/","title":{"rendered":"One-bed en suites for students \u2018wasteful\u2019, says Minister for Higher Education James Lawless \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Students having a bathroom each would be \u201cwasteful\u201d, and the Government is moving towards a co-living model involving communal space for university accommodation, Minister for Further and Higher Education James Lawless <\/a>has said. <\/p>\n

In a wide-ranging interview with The Irish Times, the Minister <\/a>also said he is close to signing off on a proposal to set rent increases every three years, rather than after the end of a tenancy, for student accommodation. <\/p>\n

Many prospective students have been forced to defer courses or change their university preference because of a lack of supply of housing and a high cost of rent in student accommodation. Mr Lawless said that under new building standards for student accommodation <\/a>that he brought forward last year, the Government is trying to \u201cproduce more rooms for the same floor space\u201d, including more shared facilities. <\/p>\n

Asked if this would be similar to a \u201cco-living\u201d model, Mr Lawless agreed. \u201cI\u2019m not talking about forcing students on top of each other.\u201d <\/p>\n

While there would be an \u201coption\u201d for students to share double or triple rooms, \u201cit\u2019s not going to be mandatory\u201d.<\/p>\n

He said: \u201cIf we have 10 individual rooms, and each gets an en suite, that seems quite wasteful to me. We could have probably 20 student beds in the same space, with maybe five shared bathrooms.\u201d<\/p>\n

New rent regulations, which would allow landlords to reset rents between tenancies, are due to come into effect from March. Mr Lawless <\/a>said he was concerned that students \u201cwould be facing a rent reset every single year\u201d. The Minister says he is now considering linking rent increases to the property, rather than the tenancy, to only allow one rent increase every three years. Mr Lawless said rent changes were one way to offer \u201csimplicity and certainty\u201d to the market. <\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I know students and maybe the Opposition don\u2019t like to talk about those terms, but it is a reality, because who builds houses? Ultimately, pension funds build houses \u2026 the money that comes to build them is capital flooding the international markets looking for a home.<\/p>\n

\u201c[Housing] is about international markets. It\u2019s actually a spreadsheet in Zurich or New York or Antwerp, more so than a builder looking at a site in Longford or Roscommon, that\u2019s actually deciding what happens here.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Students having a bathroom each would be \u201cwasteful\u201d, and the Government is moving towards a co-living model involving…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":233370,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[72,14998,119105,61,60,17162,17159],"class_list":{"0":"post-233369","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-education-and-training-boards","10":"tag-educational-research-centre-erc","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-james-lawless","14":"tag-third-level"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233369"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233369\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/233370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}