*Taoiseach Simon Harris holds his bi-lateral meeting with President Zelensky in Shannon Airport.
TAOISEACH, Simon Harris (FG) has said he will hold discussions with Clare’s elected representatives over the upset caused by the manner in which Ukrainian refugees and asylum seekers have been relocated to and from Co Clare.
Ukrainian refugees in Ennis, Kilbaha and Shannon in the past two months have been relocated from their host communities, a move which has caused upset among the Ukrainians but also within the areas where they have settled, secured employment and enrolled in local schools.
Uprooting of Ukrainian families has been criticised by elected representatives in Clare. Cllr Donna McGettigan (SF) said “chaos and heartache” has been witnessed in Shannon as a result while Cllr Joe Garrihy (FG) noted North Clare has among the highest percentage of refugees in the country, “they are being moved around without any consideration to where the children are in school or working”.
According to Cllr Bill Slattery (FG) “a silent majority” in Lisdoonvarna “who are up in arms about how their town has been turned inside out”. He said there is a feeling that Lisdoonvarna has been “turned into a Ukrainian hub”.
Taoiseach Simon Harris (FG) held a bi-lateral meeting with President of Ukraine, Volodymr Zelensky in Shannon Airport. The tightening of accommodation and social protection benefits for Ukrainians did not come up on the agenda. “He didn’t bring it up at all, he acknowledged the generosity of the Irish people and support in assisting people from Ukraine, had it come up I would have been to the point that it is very important that we move from an emergency response to a more sustainable model, we have made the changes we made because we want to be in a position where we can support those who need our support for as long as it takes, by any fair objective view the changes we’ve made very much keep in Ireland in line with what I think is best practice in many European countries, he didn’t bring it up but had he that is what I would have said”.
Speaking in the Burren Lounge of Shannon Airport with Mullaghmore as the backdrop behind him, Taoiseach Harris was questioned by The Clare Echo on the impact of these changes. “We have to look at this in the round, I travel around Ireland and I’ve been right around Ireland several times over, people say to me ‘we’ve lost our local hotel or our bed and breakfast, our community centre’, they say to me ‘what is the plan’ and at the same time I’m very proud to be Taoiseach of a country which takes this approach, I meet communities who’ve really welcomed lots of people with kids in their schools, parents working in the local communities and they are very welcome here.
“The Government has to try and bring those two objectives together and it is not easy, we’ve a situation where a lot of taxpayers money is being spent on accommodation, we’ve to constantly make sure that the model is sustainable, we can’t have a situation where as the numbers of Ukrainians in Ireland has fallen significantly where we continue to have an under-utilisation of accommodation in some areas and not capacity in the other areas, we always have to do this in a way that is compassionate, these are people that are extraordinarily welcome in our community, it is heartening that they are so welcome in communities in Clare, I’m continuing to work through these issues with colleagues, I always have an open ear and heart to how we best address these but it isn’t easy because we have to acknowledge that there could be a hotel which is fully taken up with its use that might now be half full or less than half in a town or village which says we need the hotel for the weddings, funerals and the christenings, it is a balanced approach that we need to take to all of this which from time to time has caused local tensions”.
He continued, “Sometimes, some decisions were left off until the school year ended because no one wanted to see a child disrupted in the middle of a school year so we’ve tried to approach it with a degree of common sense and compassion”.
Every individual case was not known to the Taoiseach, he acknowledged. “I do support the approach taken by the Government which is now that the numbers of people from Ukraine have very significantly reduced that we look at the overall property portfolio and that is what it is, the property portfolio that the Irish taxpayer is funding and see is this working. We also have to crucially make sure that standards, compliance and safety, a good environment for children. I said this very honestly during the local elections and when I became Taoiseach, I want to see us move from an emergency response in relation to migration and accommodation to a more sustainable approach, that does mean having to work through things.
“I’ve seen the inconsistency in approach from some politicians on this and I’m not talking about the Clare ones but where people stand up in the Dáil and say why have you come into our community and without consultation taking a hotel, a community centre or a bed and breakfast, then six months later I see people saying ‘hang on a second people are very settled in our community in the hotel’ which is a sign that integration works well and we are having to balance those things, we will see over the summer months dozens upon dozens of hotels and bed and breakfast facilities that were out of use for the purpose they were intended coming back into use, that is a sign to the Irish people that we’re beginning to have a system that works, I’m very conscious that it causes disruption and that it is not easy but none of this is easy and we have to work through it”.
On the upset experienced by the people who fled war and managed to source employment in Co Clare only to receive notice months later that they were being moved, the Taoiseach stated, “I do understand that but I also understand this, if you were in my job and you have a situation where hundreds of millions of euro every year in emergency funding is being expended on accommodation that was literally planned in an overnight emergency scenario and then you have some of that accommodation under-utilised and you have spare capacity, I can’t look Irish citizens in the eye at Budget time and say that I’m paying for a half-full hotel here or a bed and breakfast that is half empty, I can’t do it so we have to have a balanced approach, there has to be some cognisance to issues around value for money, these are human beings, it has to be done carefully and compassionately, they are extremely welcome in Ireland but it has to be a balance”.
Complaints had been raised in the Seanad by Senator Martin Conway (FG) that his calls and emails regarding the movement of Ukrainians from Shannon and Kilbaha were ignored by the Minister for Integration, Roderic O’Gorman (GP). The Taoiseach said he held his own meeting with Senator Conway in Co Clare when he arrived. “I will talk to Martin about that directly, I met Senator Conway in Clare this morning, I know he, Cllr Garrihy and others are understandably exercised about this, they are representing a community which is welcoming new people, this is a good thing and the antidote to the antics of the far-right which we’ve seen try to take hold in communities”.
