Students in Galway are being forced to vacate their rooms at weekends as properties convert to short-term lets and Airbnbs.

The unprecedented accommodation insecurity they are facing was raised by City Councillor Helen Ogbu at the Labour Party’s conference last weekend.

“A city that depends on its universities cannot expect students to build their futures on temporary weekday beds,” she said.

Cllr Ogbu also warned that children’s lives had been placed ‘on hold’ as they were forced to live in emergency accommodation for long periods.

Many children were growing up in hotel rooms and B&Bs, sharing a single room with parents and siblings, with no space for play, no desk for homework, no kitchen to prepare nutritious meals, and no possibility of inviting friends over.

“This is not emergency accommodation, it is childhood in suspension,” she said. “Raising children in single rooms, reliant on dry food and microwaved meals, is an infringement of their rights and a pathway to long-term, intergenerational trauma. We cannot allow these conditions to become normal.”

The Galway City East representative called for urgent, coordinated action on housing, saying that Government reassurance had become a substitute for meaningful intervention.

She warned that families, workers, students, and children in Galway were being stretched beyond what is sustainable or acceptable, in a functioning society.

Cllr Ogbu criticised successive Governments for allowing the crisis to solidify into a deep structural failure. “How can anyone claim the current approach is working when people are being priced out of their own communities?” she asked delegates at the conference in Limerick.

“We have rising demand, stagnant supply, and a policy environment that continues to rely on a market that has repeatedly failed to deliver secure, affordable homes.”

Calling for a renewed, state-led strategy, she emphasised the need for sustained public investment in cost rental, social and affordable homes, strategic development of public land, and strong oversight to ensure that promises translate into delivery.

She stressed that the scale of the challenge demands a unified approach involving local authorities, housing bodies, community organisations, and national Government.

“Fragmented initiatives will only deepen the crisis,” she warned. “We need coordinated action, transparency, and genuine accountability. Anything less is a disservice to the families, students, and children who are carrying the heaviest burden.”

Cllr Ogbu concluded with a call for urgency and political courage. “If we are committed to securing homes for people in Galway, partnership and ambition must guide every decision. The status quo is not just failing households; it is harming the next generation.”

Pictured: Cllr Helen Ogbu with Labour Party leader Ivana Bacik at the party’s annual conference last weekend.