Ukrainian refugees in Ireland - Megathread

I had a bedsit sit all through college and then another bedsit when i worked in the UK, and another one when I came back to Ireland. I only moved into a house share when I couldnt find a bedsit. And back into a bedsit after that. I wasnt hard up at all. I chose the bedsit because i liked hgaving my own place but didnt see the need to be paying more to get a 1 bed apartment until i moved in with a girlfriend.

he bedsit was great.

Bedsits need to come back and have a certain standard.

Ffs there are studios apts now going for 1200 p/m where people cannot open the door of the cooker fully and in the same room as the bed with a manky little partioned bathroom not far away.

Whats the difference, is a bedsit not the same thing?

How about actually making the accusation that you're dancing around?

We should have done what we are able to do. Give a finite number and cost it. If when we reach that number you make your tweaks and see if you have capacity to help more.

What we have done is open the flood gates without any plan in place and now this cost will be apparent to everyone because it will have to be paid for out of people pockets in higher taxes (that includes stealth taxes) over the next couple of years. When people see increases in taxes, make no mistake. It is because the government go in head first and make no plan.

We have an old bashed up caravan inb the garden. you couldnt sleep in it. But someone from a charity called into the house a few weeks ago and asked the bean an ti if she would think about giving it for the refugees. Never heard anything since.

But you are right. There are some nice ones in gardens all around where i live that sons and daughters have been living in quite happily for years now. Some even have lovely little gardens and vegetable patches around them.

Sometimes it feels like Irish journalists live in a bubble. Childcare has been an issue for everyone looking to work living in Ireland, and has gotten worse over the last few years. Of course its an issue for Ukrainians.... Its an issue, and has been an issue, for loads of people

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/childcare-a-growing-issue-for-ukrainian-refugees-looking-for-work-1.4861682?mode=sample

But there is an inherent strategic risk in giving a set number, because if it's high then it's effectively a target that can be used as pressure to ramp efforts up if the target isn't being met, and if it's too comfortably low then there is pressure from both within the State and without to do more. Setting a number that is 'just right' and suits everyone's agenda and interests is impossible -- especially for this type of crisis where we have a European country of over 40 million people being aggressively ravaged by a hostile Russia. It is a crisis which is international in nature that requires both co-operation and unfortunately a certain level of sacrifice of individual nations' self interest.

As for policies and plans - the same thing applies. Clear plans mean clear expectations -- and clear expectations mean clear targets. Having a good policy looks great optically and would obviously be beneficial to an extent. But having a really well thought-out plan in place for a pretty major European conflict is asking a lot and I get the impression that even if Ireland, with unprecedented levels of foresight, had pre-emptively set out the best laid plans for a war in Ukraine then (1) there would have been people criticising the government for devoting finance and resources to this exercise, as well as setting aside housing space anyway and (2) it would arguably make Ireland an even more attractive place to funnel a refugee population because it would have a clear policy in place for dealing with it while other countries fumbled around.

An outward statement that there is no cap can have advantages because it means the numbers are effectively kept vague.

If I rented my private holiday home to an Irish person for 6 months they get part 4 tenancy rights. At that point if they dont feel like giving it back to me i have to spend 2 to 4 years (the current time) going through the courts to get it back.

I think this is a relevant question for anyone who is thinking of being generous enough to give their holiday home.

But i guess we are back to the government and charities needing to supply people who take in refugees with all the facts including how they can end the agreement if it doesnt suit them. It doesnt stop anyone giving or helping, it just provides clarity in the case of it not going as originally perceived.

Perhaps, but it seems that materially you just end up at the same place, only maybe a bit slower.

The overarching problem here is that we can't look at this as if it were some sort of supply chain where we are keeping deliveries manageable versus warehouse space. Ultimately, it seems to be estimated that around 5.3 million Ukrainians have fled the country (Poland being the host of almost 3 million of those, which is a hell of a lot to be taking on for one country) with a further 6.5 million displaced within Ukraine itself - and so it remains to be seen where they end up. We have no control over that, nobody is just creating these people -- but they are there and they have to be housed somewhere and that's just a fact of reality.

There is no portal into an alternate universe where these people can just shuffle off into until such times as our dimension is ready to handle it. It's difficult to just say "right, let's hold the flow up here til we get everything sorted perfectly with this current batch, run our calculations and then get back to you with a quota for the next batch". And even if you do, it seems that it's merely an exercise of kicking cans down roads.

But you've still got a situation where a group or family of refugees are staying in a property, but refuse to remove themselves if, after 8 months, you want it back yourself, how do you go about it? There's nothing to say they can't, getting a tenant, or a guest to remove themselves from a property would be highly problematic if they decided to dig heels in, could be a hell of a lot of stress, and expense to shift them. Agreements can be largely ignored if the tenant/guest wants to tbh. With no support from government like legal costs, it could end up being nasty.