SOME 21,000 REFUGEES have arrived in Ireland from Ukraine as of this weekend, with 13,000 in state-provided accommodation. 

“While the numbers arriving might be slightly lower (than the last two weeks), the number who need state-provided accommodation is increasing,” said Roderick O’Gorman,  Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration, and Youth, speaking to Newstalk’s Gavan Reilly this morning.

“More and more, we’re finding that those who are arriving may not have any links with the country already,” he said. 

The vast majority of those in state-provided accommodation are staying in hotels and guest houses around the country, according to O’Gorman. 

“We’ve also secured the use of a number of larger institutions, former convents and the like.” Military facilities like the barracks at Gormanston have not yet had to be used, said O’Gorman. Local authorities have also been working with the department to make emergency accommodation available. 

“We’ve probably reached the limits in terms of the amount of hotel or B&B accommodation that we can provide. So it’s now looking at … institutional buildings … and looking at the supports local authorities can provide.”

O’Gorman added that it’s likely that some of this larger-scale accommodation will be used into the medium term. 

“The system’s under pressure and we’re very upfront with that … I think we also have to recognise this is a wartime situation. This is an emergency situation. And there will be circumstances where the accommodation we provide even here in Ireland won’t be the optimum as we would like to see it, but right now it’s about providing security,” he said. 

Pledged accommodation

On Tuesday, the Cabinet was told that only about half of the pledged accommodation submitted by the public to the Red Cross is suitable. 

Some 21,000 offers of accommodation have been pledged thus far, according to O’Gorman, and the department has contacted about 12,000. “In certain circumstances maybe accommodation wasn’t quite as described,” O’Gorman said, adding “we’ve had to kind of readjust our expectations.”

In some cases, O’Gorman said, people have had to reconsider what they’re able to offer “in seeing that this crisis isn’t just a four or five-week crisis; that this is something that is going to be into the medium term.”

The availability of accommodation from those submitting pledges is “hugely useful” to the state, said O’Gorman. He added that if there was significant feedback that those providing housing need state support, “we’ll continue to keep the idea of potential payments under review.”

In terms of feedback so far, he said, “the idea of people living for months in your home rather than weeks in your home, I think maybe has caused some people to reconsider their initial offer.”

Ireland is responding to the crisis as part of the EU temporary protection directive, which gives refugees access to social services and employment, said O’Gorman. That status lasts a year and can be extended, but is not full refugee status.