Dublin City Council has given permission for as many as 1,055 student beds to be let short-term to non-students.
The Dublin Inquirer reported today that providers of purpose-built student accommodation said they had anticipated a lack of demand this academic year due to the pandemic.
The accommodation is now targeted at tourists and other short-term renters.
Global Student Accommodation has been granted permission for short-term letting within at least six complexes.
Heyday Student Accommodation at Carman’s Hall in the Liberties has also received permission to use 68 of its beds for short-term lets up to the end of May 2022.
Some 571 private student flats owned by Uninest have been converted into tourist accommodation for the academic year.
Uninest, the accommodation provider, has said that it did not anticipate its international student market recovering in time for the coming academic year.
The principal permitted use of the site as student accommodation will remain during this period.
Declan Brassil & Company, acting on behalf of Uninest, told the Business Post earlier this year that the application was made on the grounds of “the continuing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on international and domestic demand for student accommodation, the consequential under-utilisation of the application resource, and the opportunity presented to make attractive and affordable accommodation available in the inner-city area”.
Uninest was previously permitted to host tourists in the complex between October 2020 and May 2021.
Lorcan Sirr, a lecturer in housing studies in TU Dublin, told the Dublin Inquirer that the permits are allowing accommodation providers to keep rents high, whereas the council “should just leave them alone and let them suffer because then at some point they will have to reduce their rents” to get students to live there.
A spokesperson for the council told the Dublin Inquirer: “At the height of the pandemic, when most students were studying remotely, short term lettings were allowed on a temporary basis only.”
The first permissions to convert purpose-built student housing to other uses were granted before the pandemic began, while the most recent decisions were made at the beginning of this month.
A spokesperson for the Department of Further and Higher Education said: “For accommodation to be removed from student use at a time when there are significant student accommodation shortages runs contrary to the aims of the National Student Accommodation Strategy and is deeply disappointing.”
