Most of the volunteers welcoming the newcomers to Palyanitsa’s door fled Ukraine after the invasion.
Alina Kritska, a 29-year-old tax official from Kyiv, volunteered every day to distract from worries about her family and boyfriend at home.
She arrived from Poland on March 9 alone after a three-day train journey in constant fear of a Russian attack.
“The Irish are really nice. “I’ve never met such good people,” she said.
There is a housing crisis in Ireland and the pressure of newcomers is starting to show.
There were 16,000 asylum applications in Ireland from 2017 to 2022, and now 22,000 Ukrainians have arrived in the three months since the February invasion.
Nick Henderson, chief executive of the Irish Refugee Council, said about 14,000 Ukrainians had been housed in public housing, but the space was quickly depleted.
The Irish Refugee Council has received 2,000 refugee shelters and the Irish Red Cross more than 24,000.
The process of approving bids and ensuring their suitability is slow. Almost half of the Red Cross’s 5,357 vacancies have been dropped.
The government has urgently called for new promises and is considering paying people to house Ukrainians in their holiday homes.
He is also drawing up plans for accommodation in a ‘camp bed’ style in large ‘warehouse-style’ facilities, which NGOs warn is unsuitable for families.
“There are 62,000 holiday homes in Ireland,” said Mr Henderson, who described the public response as “incredible”.
“If we only get 10 percent of that, it will make a real difference.”
The Catholic Church is seeking to use its extensive property portfolio to help, and Ireland’s smaller church is already accepting refugees into its homes.
Neil Richmond, TD for Dublin Rathdown, acknowledged that there is a risk of resentment against Ukrainians, but said he was proud of the Irish response after seeing the crisis unfold on their TV and smartphone screens.
“You look at cities where you see H&M and Zara and people wearing Adidas tracksuits, and that’s a lot to do with the Irish,” he said.
“We already need a lot more people to come to the country, and we won’t get the homes we need if we don’t have the people to build them,” the Fine Gael politician added.
“There are job opportunities for Ukrainians,” Brendan Smith, Fianna Fáil’s TD for Cavan / Monaghan and chairman of the parliamentary group for friendship with Ukraine, said.
The war sparked a debate over Irish neutrality and even NATO membership.
“Although Ireland is militarily neutral, let me be clear, we are not neutral in this war,” Simon Cowney, Ireland’s foreign minister, said in Kyiv on Thursday.
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