No one should have been surprised when Taoiseach Leo Varadkar told the Dáil this week that the State’s capacity to provide accommodation for refugees and international protection applicants has reached its limit due to the unprecedented numbers who have arrived since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year. If the numbers currently arriving each week were to continue for the next 12 months, accommodation and supports would be required for a further 30,000 to 50,000 people, he said. It is hard to see how this could be achieved.
His comments followed reports of heated exchanges at Cabinet over Minister for Integration Roderic O’Gorman’s proposal to limit State-provided accommodation for new arrivals from Ukraine to just 90 days in new reception centres. Among those expressing opposition were Minister for Housing Darragh O’Brien and Tánaiste Micheál Martin.
A Cabinet committee on Ukraine has been told that Ireland’s pipeline of suitable premises is not at a scale sufficient to meet projected demand. The committee also heard that the State’s provision of services should “more closely align” with the approach of other EU member states, many of which set a time limit on accommodation for refugees.
That point was echoed by the Taoiseach, who also suggested some Ukrainians who had been living safely in other parts of western Europe may subsequently have come to Ireland because of the better welfare supports available here. The concept of a “pull factor” is not without controversy but the Government appears confident that up to one third of Ukrainian arrivals may be coming here for that reason.
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If the current system is to change, it will require a great deal of nuance and sensitivity to the specific needs of vulnerable people who have travelled thousands of miles in search of safety. Children, parents and the elderly form a large proportion of those who have fled the war in Ukraine. They have usually been warmly welcomed into communities across the country. Any new system must seek to maintain that good record. Micheál Martin has reportedly echoed Department of Education concerns about educating children in new welcome centres rather than in local schools. That would indeed be a retrograde step.
But if this week’s arguments at Cabinet were a squabble over which department bears responsibility for housing future refugees, that would be unacceptable. It is the misfortune of current Ministers that they find themselves in power at a time of overlapping crises in refugee accommodation and housing provision. As the war grinds into its second winter, and the EU’s Temporary Protection directive for Ukrainians is extended until March 2025, nothing less than a whole of government response will suffice.