Student accommodation crisis

Sir, – As the parent of a third-level student who is hopefully about to begin his fourth and final undergraduate year in a Dublin university, I am worried that my son will be unable to complete his primary degree due to an inability, to date, to find suitable accommodation for the coming year.

The shortage of accommodation is a disaster and has many implications for everyone affected, but I’d like to outline those implications from the point of view of the student and their family. Having invested a huge amount of time, effort and diligence into his studies during the last three years, my 21-year-old student who went off to university three years ago full of hopes and dreams is now talking about not completing his degree, as the prospective daily commute of 2½ hours each way by private car, or minimum four hours each way by public transport, would be unsustainable in every respect. From my family’s point of view, we have all made huge sacrifices to invest the approximately €53,000 of taxed income into his university education so far, but with potentially nothing to show for it if he is unable to find a place to live this semester. He’s very demoralised and doesn’t have an alternative at the moment. We’ve been in contact with the head of his course, the students’ union, the university president’s office, but understandably there isn’t anything any of them can do; there’s an accommodation crisis.

How many other students in the same predicament will be unable to complete their studies? What is to become of them? – Yours, etc,

PATRICIA POWER,