![\"Student](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/student-accommodation-strategy-to-unlock-college-owned-land-for-development.jpg\")
Further education minister James Lawless was launching the student accommodation strategy (Cillian Sherlock\/PA)<\/p>\nThe Government is encouraging private developers to use college-owned land to deliver purpose-built student accommodation, as the further education minister said the country needs 42,000 additional beds by 2035.<\/p>\n
The National Student Accommodation Strategy 2026-2035 sets out \u201ca multi-annual plan to urgently deliver new student accommodation\u201d, including through State-financed, purpose-built student accommodation on public or private lands.<\/p>\n
The stategy, which is designed to deal with affordability and viability of supply, projects a requirement of 42,000 beds by 2035 \u2013 including an existing deficit of 15,000 beds.<\/p>\n
The Department of Further Education expects to include 10,000 \u201cdigs\u201d-style rent-a-room agreements in the 42,000 target.<\/p>\n
Further education minister James Lawless was launching the student accommodation strategy (Cillian Sherlock\/PA)<\/p>\n
The scheme sets out a plan to provide land owned by higher education instutitions (HEIs) to developers under a long-term licence.<\/p>\n
Further education minister James Lawless said the approach was an \u201cinnovative measure\u201d to unlock \u201csignificant\u201d State lands.<\/p>\n
He said HEIs had \u201csignificant land banks\u201d around the country that were \u201cuntapped\u201d.<\/p>\n
The strategy says this would be done with \u201cnecessary safeguards\u201d and could reduce cost and enhance the attractiveness to the developer.<\/p>\n
Technological Universities have already entered into licence agreements to facilitate the development of educational buildings on land they own through public-private partnerships.<\/p>\n
HEIs have secured planning permission for on-campus, purpose-built student accommodation of around 2,359 beds and are \u201cactively developing\u201d further proposals which could be advanced through private sector delivery, the plan said.<\/p>\n
Lawless said: \u201cThis will be done through a public private partnership-type (PPP) model, where we make those public lands available to private sector investment under terms that include the land always remains in the possession of the State, but that the private investment can come in, build out at scale student accommodation on those sites and in a way that guarantees occupancy for the students.\u201d<\/p>\n
The minister said it was \u201cappropriate\u201d to \u201cuse every lever at our disposal\u201d given that there is \u201cknown private sector interest\u201d and a situation where 15,000 beds with planning permission are not being delivered due to viability issues.<\/p>\n
The HEIs would have a nomination agreement, which would allow them to specify a minimum number of beds they would take up within each development.<\/p>\n
The minister said this could, for example, be between 75-90 per cent of the beds on site with the remainder going to staff or other frontline workers.<\/p>\n
Lawless said 53 suitable sites around the country had already been identified.<\/p>\n
On affordability, Lawless said \u20ac176 million in new money had been committed for student supports including bursaries and grants.<\/p>\n
He added that students would also benefit from recent rental reforms.<\/p>\n
The scheme highlights that there is \u20ac250 million in capital exchequer funding for student accommodation between 2023-2030, and a \u20ac14,000 rent-a-room relief scheme for homeowners.<\/p>\n
Asked about the yearly delivery under the overall strategy, Lawless said there were currently no annual targets as part of the plan.<\/p>\n
He said the scheme would be rolled out on a phased basis starting with Dublin, Cork and Galway, followed by Limerick, Waterford and Athlone and then other regions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Government is encouraging private developers to use college-owned land to deliver purpose-built student accommodation, as the further…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":364228,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-364227","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364227","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=364227"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364227\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/364228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=364227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=364227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=364227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}