The coming academic year will see no students housed in the historic Rubrics on campus, pending a decision on its renovation.
The old building has been taken out of service, the Director of Accommodation, Tony Dempsey, told The University Times in an email statement. The decision to not offer the rooms to students is “pending a decision on the renovation of the building”, Dempsey said, on the advice of Trinity’s Estates and Facilities office.
The decision comes as the cost of accommodation on campus has once again increased, with Trinity also sourcing additional off-campus accommodation for students in a city that is experiencing an ongoing shortage of homes and beds.
While Dempsey didn’t go into detail about what the renovations would involve nor how extensive they’d be, he did acknowledge that the increase in the cost of accommodation across campus and in Trinity Hall would be used to reinvest in college accommodation and to support refurbishment of the campus buildings, including the addition of new boilers and lifts.
The decision not to house students in the Rubrics, campus’s oldest building, will reduce the number of on-campus beds Trinity can offer students. The accommodation has shared kitchen and bathroom facilities and offers students single rooms. The Rubrics, located just behind the campanile, houses a number of academics and college staff and was built around 1700, making it the last surviving building in Library Square.
The building, which stretches across the square, is made up of Houses 22 to 26.
The Rubrics have consistently been among the cheapest rooms on campus. Classified by the College as “Standard Rooms”, the price still remains significantly lower than some of the more expensive areas of campus, such as Botany Bay and New Square, with a price last year of €4,940.25.
As prices for rooms across campus have risen in recent years, prices for the Rubrics have also increased. The price of rooms for the 2016/17 year, for example, was an increase of 3.8 per cent from 2015/16.
