Accommodation and dislocation of Ukrainians outlined to Oireachtas committee

Ukrainian children are being forced to move schools as they are shifted between different hotels due to a lack of long-term accommodation, an Oireachtas committee has been told.

Larysa Gerasko, the Ukrainian ambassador to Ireland, said one of the main problems facing the 33,000 refugees here was appropriate accommodation.

“They move from accommodation, from one hotel to another one. It’s not a problem for adults but it’s a problem for children because children have to change schools very often, and it is a little bit traumatic, I would say, for children,” she told the Oireachtas foreign affairs committee.

Citing research done by Ukrainian Action which surveyed over 2,200 refugees living here, she said 73 per cent of respondents were willing to contribute to the economy by working – but that 24 per cent had found a job and only one in five of those jobs matched their professional qualifications.

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Language skills

She said a lack of working-level English language skills was among the main obstacles, along with access to healthcare, transportation and vital infrastructure. Some 21.6 per cent of respondents do not have a pharmacy within walking distance and 30 per cent do not have a supermarket, she said.

In response to a question from Senator Diarmuid Wilson, she acknowledged that there were tensions between Ukrainians who had fled the country and those who had arrived recently from other countries, including Russia, and that this had occurred in Cavan, Kerry and Dublin.

She said she was working with the Department of Justice on a case-by-case basis to deal with what protections would be offered to those who had arrived into the country from places other than Ukraine. She also referenced examples where women who had experienced sexual abuse were afraid to call the Garda – although she said the numbers of such incidents were small.

Ms Gerasko told the committee she believed there was a plateau of Ukrainians in Ireland, and that statistics from Ukraine showed more people were arriving back into the country than were fleeing from it – although this depends on the war situation, which fluctuates and causes more people to flee when Russian forces make advances. A Government source in Ireland said reports of people leaving were anecdotal and there was no indication of a let-up in demand for accommodation here.

Earlier in the session, Andriy Yermak, head of the office of the president of Ukraine, spoke to the committee from Kyiv. He thanked Ireland for being “one of the first countries to reach out and help Ukraine” and said that Ireland had a “consistent position” on the war.

Mr Yermak told the committee that 35 per cent of Ukrainian gross domestic product had been wiped out, with direct losses of $600 billion so far. He called on Ireland to support further strengthening of sanctions, and said the European incremental approach, which sees sanctions deployed in individual “packages” periodically, was “too long and inefficient”.

He told the committee that something should be done which Russia was not expecting, “a massive large-scale sanction blow” in tandem with increasing the supplies of heavy weapons to Ukraine. He also complimented the opposition from Irish fishermen to Russian naval exercises planned for the Irish Exclusive Economic Zone earlier this year, saying Ukraine was “in raptures” after what he called a “witty and beautiful step”.