.
Cllr Deirdre Ferris.
SINN Féin Kerry County Councillor Deirdre Ferris is calling on Minister for Higher Education, Simon Harris, to ensure that any student who pays for student accommodation in advance will be refunded in the event classes move primarily online.
Cllr Deirdre Ferris of Sinn Fein stated; “I welcome recent statements that college life will resume to ‘near normal’ and I hope for the sake of our students that they do manage to have a near normal first semester.”
“But what we don’t want to see is a repeat of last year when students’ families were left out of pocket after paying rent for on campus accommodation that was never used.”
Continued below…
.
“We are seeing in other parts of the world more and more third level institutions moving online because of a spike in Covid numbers.
“When looking at the growing covid figures here and what is being said by those more qualified than me, I suspect that by October, third level institutes could follow the example of Trinity College and move classes online for semester one. Too many parents sacrifice so much to afford excessively high accommodation costs. Many lost that money last year”
Cllr Ferris added; “The government have cushioned losses for business all along, they now need to protect families who cannot afford to pay out and lose thousands”.
