Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar has announced that his government is developing plans to reduce free accommodation and other social measures for Ukrainian refugees by the end of the year, The Irish Times reports.
But Varadkar stressed that Ukrainian refugees would still be welcome in his country and that this “will not repel any Ukrainian coming to Ireland”. “This will not happen,” he said.
At the same time, he explained that the government hopes that the new measures will reduce the influx of Ukrainian refugees, as this puts pressure on affordable housing.
“We cannot close our eyes to the fact that we do not have enough housing. We are now in a situation where we are housing people in tents and heated containers,” he said during a press conference in Seoul during an official visit to South Korea.
“We need to take steps that will slow down the numbers [de refugiați] who come to us in order to gain more time to solve problems with accommodation and other subjects,” the Prime Minister of Ireland justified himself.
He said that currently between 500 and 800 Ukrainian refugees arrive in Ireland every week and that almost a third of them seek temporary protection in his country after being turned away by other European states.
The Irish government says it eventually housed some refugees in tents and containers
Varadkar also recalled his first term as prime minister, between 2017 and 2020, when he criticized some European countries for housing refugees from Syria and other countries in tents.
“And that’s where we are now in Ireland, we’ve taken in 100,000 people, over 100,000 people in the last two years. We don’t have housing, we use tents, we use containers. This is not the situation we want to be in,” Varadkar explained.
He emphasized that his country is more generous to Ukrainian refugees compared to other European states that do not offer them free housing.
Varadkar also announced that his government plans to review the welfare system for refugees to encourage more of them to seek work in the Irish economy. He noted that currently about 14,000 Ukrainian refugees have found work in Ireland.
Last July, months after the start of the Russian invasion, Ireland suspended visa-free travel for refugees from many European countries to make way for more Ukrainian refugees.
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Source: Hot News
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