We pay Ukrainians to salve our consciences

LESS than two years after the first Ukrainians landed on our shores and it appears that the Welcome Mat is being put in mothballs. The Government is fearful of giving any more ground to the far right and its odious habit of making a populist issue out of a humanitarian disaster by stirring up local unrest about refugee accommodation allied to the deepening housing crisis, so perhaps the real surprise is that it has taken this long.

Yet the proposal from Integration Minister Roderic O’Gorman, which has caused the latest Cabinet rift, to reduce the country’s so-called pull factor is pretty drastic by any measure.

The idea of funnelling Ukrainians into the private sector after 90 days in Stateprovided accommodation, typically in hotels, may ease the pressure on Mr O’Gorman’s department and ramp it up on Housing Minister Darragh O’Brien’s. But given the impossible rental market, it’s just magical thinking. For where are the 30,000 to 50,000 new arrivals expected next year meant to go when they have enjoyed their 90 days in a tent in Mullingar barracks?

Mr O’Gorman can shrug his shoulders all he likes, but his attitude certainly contradicts the Green Party’s save the world credentials and its insistence on tough personal sacrifice for the sake of the greater good.

IT IS true that our State supports, which are more generous than those of other countries, turn Ireland into a bit of a magnet for Ukrainians, and even tempt some who have settled in other safe corners of Europe to up sticks and head over here.

But the €220 per week Jobseeker’s Allowance, Child Benefit payments and extras such as Back to School Allowances are not special supports for Ukrainians. They are merely our basic welfare entitlements, which admittedly can seem generous at a time of record employment.

If we want to debate our high welfare rates or their role in promoting welfare tourism, so be it. But let us leave the poor Ukrainians out of it. Cutting their supports to bring them into line with other countries smacks of subjecting them to a second-class citizenship that is intolerable for the 98,000 mostly women and children living here, most of whom would be back home in Mariupol or Kharkiv tomorrow given half a chance.

But if cutting welfare rates is a new low, then the proposal to teach Ukrainian children separately in Welcome Centres for the first few months is an almost sinister indicator of the turn in some attitudes at Cabinet level. Thankfully the Department of Education is against segregation and treating a tranche of traumatised and disadvantaged children to a system of ad hoc, on-the-hoof lessons while the rest of the country learns the tried and tested curriculum.

There are things we can do to have Ukrainians help pay for their keep, which don’t involve cutting welfare or removing the entitlement to housing and education. One is to help grown men to join the labour force, as well as women who are not tied down by childcare. If they don’t have the skills, they can retrain or work in jobs where no great command of English would be needed.

SUCH a model might be more sustainable than the current model of welfare dependency, which was created in an emergency when it was hoped that the upheaval would be short-lived. We are in an unusual situation as one of the few EU countries whose neutrality prevents them being of military assistance to Ukraine. The compromise between our conscience and our neutrality lies in providing a devastated people from a war zone with the means to have a halfdecent lifestyle, while being thankful that Ukraine is prepared to fight the West’s battles on our behalf rather than capitulate to Vladimir Putin.