Students at University of Galway have asked the public for help in the search for student accommodation before the return to college next week.
Galway commuters were handed leaflets outside the train station and bus stops in Eyre Square from 8.30am on Monday in an appeal from the students’ union at the University of Galway in an effort to source rooms for new and returning students.
Maisie Hall, president of University of Galway Students’ Union, said they will distribute about 600 leaflets to commuters throughout the week.
The union is asking those with suitable spare rooms to open them to student renters by advertising them for free on the University Student Pad website.
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“We have students commuting for up to seven hours a day, paying extortionate rent, sleeping on friends’ couches or living in hostels. Students cannot possibly study, live and work under these conditions,” Ms Hall said.
Paddy Murnane, vice-president of the students’ union, said they were receiving “hundreds of emails and phone calls every day from students and their families desperately seeking housing”.
“There’s also been an increase in accommodation fraud which is adding to this nightmare situation,” he added.
Ruán Ó Céilleachair (20), a second-year marine science student from Waterford, said he made inquiries on about 200 places and heard back from “only a handful”.
He came across one room that was €700 a month but did not allow access to the kitchen.
“I had almost paid the money at that point to get a place with no kitchen access, which would’ve meant that I would have to eat out of the microwaves at the University of Galway every single day, or eat out every single day, which I frankly do not have the funds for,” he said.
Aryan Thakur (24), who has just finished a master’s in business analytics at the university, said that after agreeing to rent a shared room for €650 a month in Galway last year, he was asked to pay “a deposit which was for the first month’s, the 11th month’s and the 12th month’s rent, plus a security deposit”.
He said there were other rooms being let out in the house, meaning eight people were paying a total of €5,200 in rent a month between them for the property.
Thakur has recently moved out of the room and said finding somewhere to live in Galway after this was “very difficult”.
He and his friends “had work references, we had all the necessities a landlord would look for”, but were “not even getting viewings”, he said.
