Ireland

Ukrainian ambassador says she fully understands Ireland is facing accommodation challenges

Larysa Gerasko accepts entitlements for temporary protection directive beneficiaries had to be reduced from today

Ukrainian ambassador Larysa Gerasko was speaking at the opening of the Unissued Diplomas exhibition at MTU Kerry. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw

Anne Lucey
Thu Mar 14 2024 - 19:00

The Ukrainian ambassador to Ireland said she fully understands that Ireland is facing challenges in accommodation shortage and that changes have had to come into effect today.

The ambassador was speaking at the opening of an exhibition, Unissued Diplomas, documenting the deaths of 40 young Ukrainian students who will never graduate because they lost their lives fighting or in the collapse of their homes.

Kerry is hosting 10,000 Ukrainians now and many are expected to visit the exhibition in the library of MTU Kerry. The university also has 40 Ukrainian students.

Instructor with National Learning Network Tralee, Jackie Moriarty, who helps integrate the Ukrainians in the community, said all her students were Ukrainian and were so well educated.

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One of her students, Oksana, who lost her home in Chernigov, was crying and apologised for being overcome.

Among the 40 to have lost their lives were journalism student Oleksandr (22), who died driving a patrol battalion on March 22nd, 2022, and English teacher Polina, who died in the rubble of her building aged 20 on March 3rd that year.

Ambassador Larysa Gerasko said that the Ukrainian government will encourage its people to return after the end of the war. Seven million people had fled the country and many were young.

“We [will] need our people back home,” the ambassador said.

She said the changes that come into place, which reduce the entitlements afforded to beneficiaries of the temporary protection directive, will apply to newcomers.

The embassy had launched an information campaign in Ukraine about the change, she said.

Chair of governing body of MTU Tralee Jimmy Deenihan has established close links with the community in Kerry and with members of parliament in Ukraine.

MTU in Tralee was the first Irish university to host the exhibition – after Harvard and other world universities.

The Ukrainian students in Tralee study computing, engineering, pharmaceutical science and health and leisure. Links are currently being established with universities in Ukraine.

Inna Ponomorova, a lawyer by profession, arrived in 2022 with her young daughter who is now in third year in secondary school in Tralee.

Now working with a local development organisation in Tralee, she helps her community understand Irish legislation. Most people who would be on smaller payments as of today, would wish to work, she felt.

However, younger students said the cuts worried them.

“The war is not over yet,” computing student Anna Kovalenko said.

The exhibition will go on a tour throughout Ireland over the coming weeks.

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