As a cold snap bites in Dublin, some Trinity students living on campus will lose their heating and hot water today and tomorrow after a burst in the district heating mains.
Houses 28 and 30 in the Graduates Memorial Building, as well as houses 33, 34, 35, 36 and 37 in New Square will lose all heating and hot water. Houses 11 to 20 in Botany Bay will have heating but will lose their hot water.
In an email sent to on-campus residents, the College said: “Our Technical Team are working on the problem and hope to have the problem resolved by tomorrow afternoon.”
“We expect an update around lunchtime on Tuesday 17 December.”
Dublin is set to be chilly tonight, with temperatures dropping to as low as minus two degrees. Frost and freezing fog patches are also expected.
Tomorrow will be sunny, with temperatures rising to between four and seven degrees.
The weather caused problems for residents earlier in the semester. In October, Trinity warned students to stay indoors in case of high winds as a result of Storm Lorenzo.
In August, the Irish Independent reported that College brought in €13 million from its on-campus accommodation last year – a 33 per cent increase from 2014.
Student accommodation has been the focus of much media attention in recent weeks, with every university in the country raising accommodation costs in the midst of a worsening accommodation crisis.
In Trinity, the cost of a room in Goldsmith Hall went up by €389 between last year and this year.
Activist group Cut the Rent was set up this year to build support for the idea of rent strikes on campus. In November, the group announced that it will not launch a rent strike in January.
The group, which secured the backing of Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union, did not press ahead with rent strikes amid concerns of insufficient support among campus residents.
