THE AVIVA STADIUM is being used to temporarily host Ukrainian refugees this week, it is understood.
Just under 100 Ukrainian refugees are currently being housed in the stadium, with all refugees having stayed in the temporary accommodation for the last six days.
It is understood that these refugees will be moved onto separate accommodation tomorrow after spending a week at the stadium.
Stadium Director Martin Murphy said that the Aviva was originally asked by the Department of Sport around whether or not it had availability to host Ukrainians, with the stadium having a week of availability.
He said that while it was a “basic setup”, the stadium was not able to be used for a long period of time.
“We’re not geared up for long periods, but we wanted to do our bit,” said Murphy.
Additionally, Ukrainian refugees will not be asked to stay overnight at Dublin Airport with the airport not to be used as temporary accommodation any longer.
Currently, the Gormanston military camp in Co Meath is being used as temporary accommodation, with Ukrainian refugees staying in tented accommodation.
The camp itself can hold 350 Ukrainian refugees at a time and it’s understood that 60 are currently staying in the camp.
Since the war in Ukraine began in February, 42,000 Ukrainian refugees have arrived in Ireland so far, with 30,900 being granted emergency, short-term accommodation by the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth.
Approximately 50,000 Ukrainian refugees are expected to arrive by the end of August.
Earlier this week, Minister for Integration Roderic O’Gorman confirmed that the monthly €400 payment for families taking in Ukrainian refugees would begin being paid out from next month.
The payment, which will be paid on the second Tuesday of each month, can be backdated as far as 4 March in line with how long the accommodation has been provided.
It’s understood that approximately 900 pledged accommodation sites are being used to house Ukrainian refugees, with approximately 2,700 refugees between vacant properties and shared accommodation with families.
After the Red Cross pledge portal was originally set up, there were approximately 25,000 pledges from families earlier this year.
However, in recent months a significant number of these pledges have been withdrawn, with approximately 10,000 pledges still being examined or already in use.
The Journal understands that about 3,000 of these pledges are so-called ‘vacant’ properties and over 6,000 are shared accommodation.
Student accommodation currently being used to host Ukrainian refugees is also set to slowly decrease, as college students return in September.
Over the summer, 5,000 student accommodation beds were available since April with these now expected to fluctuate ahead of a full return to colleges and universities.
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