At 11.11 a.m. next Thursday, students from all over this State will walk out of their lectures. They have a list of well-justified demands, including adequate funding for the sector to address a legacy of chronic underfunding, reform of Student Universal Support Ireland, SUSI, and a living wage including decent pay for PhD researchers who are denied worker status. Three of their demands centre around the crisis in student accommodation, yet this year's budget is the third consecutive budget from the Government with no allocation for student accommodation. Students have had to defer their courses, sleep in cars and travel long distances. Will the Government look again at student accommodation and stop avoiding the inevitability of investing in such accommodation? Will it listen to these students?

While the one-off measures contained within the budget are welcome, they do little to hide the fact family carers are still undervalued by the Government. Pension entitlements are still an issue, and whatever increases in money that carers will see are likely to be offset by their having to continue to pay to go private for various therapies because State provision cannot keep up. The HSE recently told me, in regard to a family whose occupational therapist is advocating for respite, that it was not possible to provide a specific timeframe for when respite would be scheduled because there are not enough places available in the south east to meet the demand. Families are getting into debt to go private to address the needs their loved ones have, and the Government thinks one-off payments are going to hide that from us all. What is it going to do to get those services staffed and rolled out?

As Deputy Conway-Walsh knows, we are pursuing a new policy in regard to student accommodation. For the first time as a State, we are going to invest in getting under way projects that have been stuck and building college-owned affordable accommodation. We will update the Cabinet committee on housing on this next week. I am meeting representatives of the Union of Students in Ireland, USI, this afternoon on it. As the Deputy will know, we took a number of cost-of-living measures in the budget, such as the first reduction in the contribution fee in more than two decades. I think I put the same amount of new funding into core funding that Sinn Féin proposed in its alternative budget.

To respond to Deputy Martin Browne, the budget provides for a €500 payment for carers, not means-tested, which they will receive before Christmas, and a €12 increase in the carer's allowance and the carer's benefit from the new year. There is additional funding for respite too. I fully appreciate how important it is that carers be able to get a break from caring. That is important in order that they can continue to do the work they do. The funding will be there. Recruitment of staff is a challenge, as the Deputy knows. That is certainly not a problem unique to us but we will do our best in that regard. One thing that is significant is that the Minister for Social Protection will bring through legislation next year to recognise the contributions that carers have made during years of caring towards eligibility for a State pension, not means-tested, which is a big step forward.