OPPOSITION POLITICIANS HAVE indicated that they believe the government did not prepare sufficiently to accommodate refugees coming to Ireland from Ukraine.
Sinn Féin Senator Lynn Boylan said there was a “failure to plan” while Labour TD Aodhán Ó Ríordáin said that some options “could have been exhausted in previous months”.
Their remarks follow the reveal of Government plans to introduce a policy where refugees staying in a hotel who are offered alternative accommodation and refuse it would no longer have an entitlement to the hotel accommodation or subsequent housing offers.
Speaking on RTÉ Radio One’s Saturday with Katie Hannon, Boylan said that “nobody’s denying that the numbers that have come in recent times is a huge challenge for the government”.
“But back in February, they were talking about 200,000 refugees coming from Ukraine alone. So there’s been a failure to plan and there hasn’t been an all of government approach,” she said.
“It seems that Roderic O’Gorman’s department [equality and integration] is expected to do all of the lifting whereas in fact, what you need is a whole of government approach.
“We need the Minister for Housing to be on board, the Minister for Education, Minister for Health, so that we can put in place wraparound services, so if there is going to be modular homes going into communities and if those communities already have a lack of resources in terms of access to GPS or in terms of schools, then extra resources have to be put in there to help.”
At an incorporeal meeting yesterday, the government signed off on hotel contract changes that will provide bed-only accommodation for Ukrainians.
Around 20% of hotel rooms across the country are currently being used to accommodate Ukrainians.
Other measures it approved include the doubling of the monthly payment for people housing Ukrainians to €800.
Additionally, the greater use of army barracks and defence force buildings, as well as modular house building, were given the green light.
Ó Ríordáin said today that the suggestion that many Ukrainians were refusing accommodation offers was a “dangerous narrative” and said he did “not know where it has come from”.
In terms of the government’s plans, he said: “I think other avenues could have been exhausted in previous months, like modular housing.”
Also speaking on the programme, Minister of State at the Department of Finance Seán Fleming cited “good reasons” why someone may refuse a particular accommodation offer.
“There might be a child with special needs, there might be a mother who has a health issue, and in those circumstances, yes, those rules would not apply and they’re not applying at the moment,” Fleming said.
“But a person would have to have a reasonable reason not to accept the first offer of accommodation and if there are reasonable reasons, I think our services are well able to cope with that.”
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