Student accommodation will not be used to house refugees during term time, the Department of Higher Education has confirmed. 

Earlier this year, the owners of an accommodation complex in Sligo announced they would be housing refugees in the property full-time instead of students.

Minister Simon Harris said he was strongly opposed to the plan and told Newstalk, “Student accommodation that is required for students needs to be used for students.”

Officials have since drawn up a protocol to instruct accommodation providers on how they should approach the issue.

“I did feel - and I know Minister O’Gorman shared the view - that it was important, rather than having an ad-hoc scenario where this would be dealt with on a case by case basis, that there would be a framework agreement put in place so that there can now be clarity,” Minister Harris said.

“I think the clarity is very welcome; accommodation that was built for the purpose of being student accommodation cannot now be used [to house refugees] unless it has been vacant for 12 months.”

2AT3PY7 Broadstone Hall, Student Accommodation, one of many such buildings which have sprung up in Dublin recently amid some controversy.

The student accommodation complex in Sligo will now house students as it has done in previous years and Minister Harris said this was good news for people who hope to study in the area.

“All of the beds that have been provided [to refugees] for the summer period - and, indeed, last year - will be handed back to the universities and to student use in advance of the college year,” he said.

“Students are really eager; the college is really eager to do everything they can to help people with this humanitarian crisis but there also needs to be a degree of commonsense in how it works.

“I think the protocol tries to get that balance right.”

Between February 2022 and May this year, some 82,000 Ukrainians moved to Ireland under the EU’s Temporary Protection Directive.

Main image: Split of student housing and Simon Harris.