€400 BOOST FOR THOSE HOSTING REFUGEES

APPLICATIONS for the €400 Accommodation Recognition Payment have opened for people hosting Ukrainian refugees.

The money is for people who have made a minimum hosting commitment of six months – and is also backdated to March 4 last for those hosting for that long.

It is available until the end of March 2023.

The Department of Social Protection is making the payments, and applications can be made at Mywelfare.ie.

Hosts will be paid on the second Tuesday of each month, with the first payment on August 9.

The same legislation also allows Ukrainians to avail of the National Childcare Scheme, which will provide financial support for the use of crèches and other childcare.

Minister for Integration Roderic O’Gorman, pictured, said that offers of accommodation have helped to home some of the 40,000 Ukrainians who have arrived here.

There have been problems with housing

Ukrainians in the midst of Ireland’s accommodation crisis. Some of those who arrived this month have been sleeping on chairs in Dublin Airport and the Citywest refugee accommodation hub is full. There are more than 43,000 Ukrainian refugees here, with 30,600 in State accommodation. The rate of Ukrainians arriving peaked around March, then dropped off. Numbers are up again due to a rise in attacks on civilian areas in the besieged country. Offers of accommodation have been transferred from the Red Cross to the Department of Integration. Details of these properties were sent to local authorities so refugees could be placed. About 9,000 vacant and shared accommodation offers have been passed from the Red Cross to the Government. Minister O’Gorman has previously told the Dáil that ‘there is an inevitability’ that emergency and tented accommodation would have to be used to tackle what would be ‘perhaps the greatest humanitarian crisis Ireland has ever faced’.