Cork students 'are blatantly flouting Covid-19 rules'

Students attending house parties in Cork face eviction, expulsion from college or jail, because residents are demanding existing laws be used to shut the houses hosting them down.
Cork students 'are blatantly flouting Covid-19 rules'
Magazine Road & Surrounding Area Residents Association members protesting about a spate of house parties. Picture: Denis Minihane

- with reporting from Eoin English

Students attending house parties in Cork face eviction, expulsion from college or jail, because residents are demanding existing laws be used to shut the houses hosting them down.

Next week, they are to meet gardaí and officials from University College Cork, Cork City Council, and the HSE, and want the 1947 Health Act, with provisions including penalties of fines and jail, to be used.

It follows a string of drunken house parties since a recent influx of students from other parts of Cork and Kerry and Limerick in and around College Rd.

Cork North Central TD Colm Burke, who has raised the issue with Minister for Justice Charlie Flanagan, said: “What is happening is very disturbing.”

Local Fine Gael councillor Shane O’Callaghan, who is a barrister, said: “The way students have been behaving is totally unacceptable. They are blatantly flaunting Covid-19 rules. Residents — many of whom in the at-risk category — feel their lives are being put at risk.”

Former mayor Catherine Clancy, who represents residents, said: “We have had enough. We have asked them to go back to where they come from but they have ignored us.

We have gone as far as we can. It’s up to the authorities to act now, and to act with existing legislation.

The presidents of University College Cork and Cork Institute of Technology have — together with their respective student union presidents — appealed for students to act “responsibly”.

“While term has finished, students acting irresponsibly are still subject to disciplinary procedures,” the presidents said.

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