Amid acute financial crisis, while the European Union nations are taking drastic measures in reducing financial benefit and housing facilities to Ukrainian refugees, Ireland is going to take strict measures by slicing weekly financial allowance as well as housing benefits.
According to RT International, Ukrainian refugees living in subsidized housing in Ireland may soon see their welfare benefits slashed, Social Protection Minister Heather Humphreys has warned, according to local media. The current arrangement is “not sustainable in the long run”, according to the minister.
Irish government already has a plan in motion to massively cut welfare for new arrival refugees, under which weekly allowances will be reduced from current €220 (US$239) to €38.80 (US$42), while housing will now be provided for 90 days rather than indefinitely.
Social Protection Minister Heather Humphreys told the Assembly of Ireland, “We may have to make the decision that anybody in state provided accommodation, regardless of what date they arrived, they will receive a payment of €38.80”.
Currently, Ireland provides tens of thousands of Ukrainian refugee’s state housing and a jobseeker’s allowance of €232 per week, but a devastating housing crisis and riots in the capital over immigration policy, have forced the government to cut state benefits, bringing the country in line with other EU nations.
In January Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky called on Germany to stop financially supporting refugees in the country, arguing that it would be better to give money to the state budget.
Western cash and military aid infusions for Kiev have slowed in recent months after Ukraine’s counteroffensive last year ended without significant gains and nearly 400,000 Ukrainian casualties, according to Moscow’s estimates. However, Ukraine’s chief of military intelligence, Kirill Budanov, has promised another counteroffensive this spring.
Meanwhile, in December last year, Mikhail Podoliak, a senior aide to President Vladimir Zelensky said, Ukrainian men of fighting age who fled the country amid the conflict with Russia should be forced to return. A set of restrictions that would limit their access to aid and services in their places of stay is required to achieve this goal, he told Ukraine’s Channel 24 in an interview. Podoliak’s words support comments made by Defense Minister Rustem Umerov, who told Germany’s Bild tabloid earlier in December that all Ukrainian men of military age living abroad were to be summoned to recruitment centers. The minister also warned that those who fail to comply could face sanctions.
According to the Zelensky aide, no one should be allowed to just “sit out” the conflict and shed responsibility for their nation. “They should be equal”, Podoliak said, referring to Ukrainians living abroad and those who stayed and are now being mobilized.
“Those should be the consultations with the governments of foreign nations where our men are residing”, he said, adding that the talks should be focused on “whether they [the Ukrainians] can further get temporary residence permit, have certain preferential treatment, get aid” there.
Podoliak also said that Umerov was “probably” already considering a set of measures that would “give our guys abroad an opportunity to make a choice: either to get drafted or… lose certain opportunities granted to people that temporarily left Ukraine”.
In December 2023, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that the nation’s military had proposed calling up an additional 450,000-500,000 people, and that the government wanted to allocate an additional 500 billion hryvnia (US$13.3 billion) to the effort.
In the same month Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu estimated that Ukraine had lost over 383,000 soldiers since the start of the conflict, adding that roughly half of the casualties were sustained during its much-hyped summer counteroffensive.
Some of Ukraine’s Western backers have already expressed their opposition to plans to force Ukrainian refugees to go back and fight. “It will not be the case that we are now forcing people to get drafted or [join] the military service against their will”, German Justice Minister Marco Buschmann told journalists.
The minister said that the German constitution forbids forcing any German national to serve in the military with arms in their hands and he “cannot imagine” Berlin “forcing people from other countries to do so”.
According to media reports, some 100,000 Ukrainians already in receipt of welfare benefits in Ireland will not be affected – at least for now. When Humphreys explained the policy change to TDs (members of the Irish parliament) in January, she said similar changes “down the road” could affect “anybody in state-provided accommodation, regardless of what date they arrived.” The new rules were expected to come into force by the end of January, but have yet to be signed into law.
Social Protection Minister Heather Humphreys’ new remarks, which were reported by the Irish Independent, are the strongest yet made by the minister on the matter. Ukrainians who arrived in Ireland in the first waves of 2022 “genuinely had nothing” and needed higher protection, she explained, but “things have changed slightly since then.”
Many governments in the EU have been reducing welfare programs for Ukrainian citizens to cut costs and provide an incentive for them to either leave or put more effort into providing for themselves. There is also growing discontent among local populations.
Some people are frustrated at the cost of supporting Kiev’s conflict against Moscow, which their governments pay with taxpayers’ money, and the perceived failure of the Ukrainians to integrate. Many of the refugees have no intention of returning to their home nation anytime soon.
A poll by the charity Ukrainian Action in Ireland showed that 53 percent of Ukrainians living in the republic under temporary protection want to stay long-term, up from around 40 percent last year.
According to the survey, over 40 percent of such people are employed, but just 9 percent of them are working within their profession, despite having a generally high level of education and work experience. The group has blamed the language barrier and the fact that many of them are city dwellers who were settled in rural areas.
Meanwhile, according to several sources, Ukrainian female refugees in the EU nations mostly are recruited as domestic help, cleaners, while a large number of them are being recruited by escort services and for working as sex workers.
