Ukrainian refugees in Ireland - Megathread

I suspect this is just an opinion. From what has been said they are hoovering up any public spaces they can get and asking people to help with private property. The rental market is affected in three ways, a chronically supply shortage, which will probably not be solved in the next 12-24 months even with all the so-called vulture funds involved. Exacerbating this is the accelerating exit of small landlords from the market. Add in students who are not in accommodation competing for very limited resources and HAP stuff and it's extreme luck for some to find a new place to live. What it is not, is housing Ukrainian refugees.

With the summer coming to its end I notice that little change in the attitude or behavior of the Ukrainians that have been staying in the nearby locations. Most of them have zero interest in work. My neighbor's kid worked in a local restaurant over the summer, he said not one ukrainian ever asked for work there. Meanwhile, the owner dropped leaflets in two hotels where there are groups of ukrainians have been staying. A few of them went to ukraine to visit family and friends, apparently. Yet, the local community is feeling obliged to provide entertainment for them like if they were some sort of bored kids. The attitude of complete entitlement on behalf of ukrainians who come here is shocking. Manners would be nice to have for some them too.

a friend has organized free English language courses only to merge three groups into one, which now encounters less than 10 people. among the complaints: the course is boring, the course has homework to do, the classes are held at inconvenient time... Just to note, she does that all in her free time, free of charge. Classes are held in walking distance.

students' accommodation is another thing. I don't know why people think that students have been flaky about it and protested for all sorts of things but not that. They did. there were protests outside Dail last September, there were letters, petitions, meetings with TDs, you name it. All to come to: ah, well, it is tough but we have no resources... Now magically they found resources to accommodate thousands and thousands of people , most of whom are taking an absolute mickey out of this situation.

Our local primary school emailed to inform there will be another lot of ukrainian kids coming, so they will be looking for free backpacks, pencil cases, stationary, etc... all to be brand new only.

Any process involving resources of the state should have control and supervision. It should not be "open for all" like it is now. It is looking for abuse of the system.

Repeating bullshit doesn't make it true.

First, many millions are internally displaced and are being accommodated in western Ukraine.

But secondly, there have been many missile attacks on civilian targets, including those in "safe" "non-combat" areas. If your country was being illegally invaded, would you be happy moving your family from Dublin to Limerick, because Limerick is probably going to be safe?

How short people's memories are. It's literally only a couple of months since the 64km-long RuAF convoy was approaching Kyiv. They got as close as 30km from the centre of Kyiv and only aren't there now because of the fierce resistance they encountered combined with luck with the weather bogging down their main convoy.

• Odesa is on the Black Sea but nowhere near Donbas - repeatedly attacked with cruise missiles.
• Vinnytsia is in central Ukraine - attacked with rockets last month.
• Kremenchuk is also in central Ukraine, nowhere near a combat zone. A shopping mall attacked with missiles, during the day.

There are many more examples.

Finland and Sweden are now clamoring to join NATO. Why? Because they don't trust Russia to confine their expansion to the Donbas region (after they'd already annexed Crimea!). I think ordinary Ukrainian citizens, then, are perfectly justified in not hanging around in what boardsies deem to be "safe" areas.

The current system is designed to be abused by any spoofer that can climb on a plane. It will eventually reach an unsustainable limit and start crumbling and then you’ll find genuine refugees are being turned away while spoofers that got in first are being looked after. This is the end result of wanting to look good instead of dealing with a solution practically, you are doing more harm than good. Then the end result is a resentment to all refugees and not just the imposters and economic migrants.

The current system is absolutely not designed to be abused. It’s designed to provide support to people who need it, who are already assessed as being in genuine need of support. You’ll never find genuine refugees being turned away, but they would be granted that status by more objective standards than any individual’s personal beliefs about their legitimacy.

You speak of this being the end result of wanting to look good, and your concerns for rising inflation and international employees being unable to find accommodation all the rest of it, but you’re engaging in some first class NIMBYism with your whole nonsense about social housing being the last priority in high demand areas and refugees should be in camps with no social welfare benefits or child benefit and simply call it by another name - a subsistence allowance. Still nothing to suggest it wouldn’t amount to the same thing.

What you’d end up with is simply even more people being priced out of the property market and rents skyrocketing as people who could afford to pay would want to move into the nicer areas, creating an even greater wealth gap than already exists. That’s not to mention the cost of providing amenities like schools and other utilities in areas where there is no demand because nobody wants to live there. You’d simply end up with what is becoming of Dublin City already with the numbers of people who are homeless living in tents, and transient employees living in high-demand areas in properties which are owned by their employers.

Your end-goal is all too obvious - reconfigure society so that you become the main beneficiary of those systems, and you aren’t surrounded by riff-raff. Your proposals aren’t dealing with anything practically, they’re just a means for YOU to look good by comparison to the people you believe should be in encampments. It has nothing to do with reducing resentment towards refugees. It’s blatantly obvious that if you had your way, nobody would qualify for refugee status if you could help it.

Thankfully for everyone else in Irish society, yours are the sort of ideas that belong in the pub, as opposed to public policy.

I don’t normally read your incredibly lengthy posts (btw have you nothing better to do all day than post on boards) but that post makes absolutely no sense

The point was not in admiring one's voluntary work but rather in observing no effort in improving their own situation by Ukrainians who stay there.

The woman in question - a teacher - has experience in teaching English to foreigners. Classes were divided into levels, she mentioned that majority got rather poor English. Boring as a valid reason? seriously? I would accept it as an excuse from a 6 year old alright. But to hear such a "reason" from adults who do sweet nothing all day, live in a country and speak no language? You get free classes at your doorstep (no travel, 5 minute walk). It is ridiculous.

It had nothing to do with content of the classes but rather with the attitude. There are still a few people who are sticking with the classes and at least making effort to be self-sufficient in small things, like going groceries or asking for basic things without looking for a translator. but majority, sadly, treat the whole situation as a free stay with everything handed to them at first request.

As I posted earlier on thread, there were special refugee green cards or visas given out by the US for people from Northern Ireland back in the day

Did you read the post I was responding to? It might help you make sense of the one post of mine that you don’t normally read anyway.

Btw, no Officer, I don’t have anything better to do when I’m posting on Boards. If I did, I’d be doing that instead.

Would I be right in thinking that doesn’t make any sense to you either? Bet you regret wasting your time reading this post now too 😂

I guess maybe to do with the US wanting to offer employment opportunities to Irish at the same time? My mother's family fled to Dublin during the troubles but I never heard anything about the refugee green cards before, at any rate Irish that went to the US wouldn't have had free handouts left right and centre so not the same thing

Looks like I was right. Direct quote below from a conversation amongst Ukrainians. Couple went back to Ukraine and left two grandmothers in Ireland in accommodation designed for 6. Of course Ireland doesn’t have the balls to implement the 7 days rule. The 2 grandmothers don’t want to share with each other the poor things.

“Husband and wife have not lived in our hotel for 3 weeks, while the husband left Ukraine because he is the guardian of his 82-year-old mother, his wife's mother 73 years old is also here. They left their grandmothers in the hotel, and left themselves. At the same time, the room stands with things and no one evicts them, and grandmothers have each separate triple room, they did not want to live together. So not everywhere they comply with the law on 7 days, probably just designed for people's conscience.”

No I haven’t, I think they’ve already suffered enough 😂