Athlone student housing would be ‘relief valve’ on local rental market

By Rebekah O'Reilly

Purpose-built student accommodation in Athlone would provide "a relief valve" on wider rental market, Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science of Ireland James Lawless.

At the opening of the Mary Ward Centre for Science in the Technological University of the Shannon (TUS) Athlone last week Minister Lawless addressed the need for purpose-built student accommodation in the Midlands town.

"I'm very aware of the need for student accommodation in Athlone. I've been speaking to the college management team here in TUS Athlone about a few local possibilities, but there's no particular project just yet. I've tasked my team with examining proposals and seeing what we can do in the Athlone area to advance it.

"We have a number of students living in various housing and accommodation arrangements around the town, and if we had purpose-built student accommodation, some of that might be freed up for families and normal residents in the private rental sector. We need to provide a bit of a relief valve to the wider rental market in each area."

On a wider scale, Minister Lawless noted that Government is planning a package which aims to standardise student accommodation across the island of Ireland.

"In Government, we are looking at a package of student accommodation across the country. At the moment, student accommodation is ad hoc with different colleges in different areas doing their own projects.

"I have hope that those plans will be published this summer."We're trying to standardise it the way that secondary school buildings are so that there's a standard design, with everything from climate requirements to insulation to the architecture. It should in theory make it much more cost effective, much faster, and make procurement easier."