Ukrainian benefit cut shows the Government is scared

FAR-RIGHT, anti-immigrant, pro-Putin, antidemocratic extremists were handed a major victory this week with the Government’s meanminded decision to slash welfare payments to Ukrainian refugees in State accommodation. It’s a good job that Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky and his fellow patriots are not depending on our heroes in Government Buildings for weapons to defend themselves against the vicious Russian Bear or they’d now be reduced to fighting with their bare hands.

Rather conveniently, military neutrality means that we can’t send any lethal equipment to Ukraine. So, in fairness, when Putin’s invasion of Ukraine began on February 24, 2022, we stepped up with a warm céad míle fáilte for more than 100,000 refugees forced to flee their country.

But now Micheál Martin’s promise to Ukrainians two years ago that ‘our home is your home’ rings very hollow. Ireland’s solidarity with a nation plunged into hell for demanding freedom on Putin’s doorstep is over. The message from the Irish Government is: ‘Stay away’.

IT’S all because our Government is shocked by the cost, which Mr Martin describes as ‘enormous’. They’re also war-weary, with Finance Minister Michael McGrath candidly admitting that nobody thought the conflict would last this long. Mr McGrath failed to mention the magnificent upside to the long war in Ukraine, which is that the flame of democracy and freedom still burns there and the Russian dictatorship has, so far, been denied the speedy jackboot victory it anticipated.

So this week, just as Russian forces make significant gains on the battlefield, Taoiseach Simon Harris, Foreign Affairs Minister

Micheál Martin and their Government colleagues sign off on their own slash-and-burn tactics towards payments to refugees. Masters of timing, the lot of them. And in a blatant attempt to gaslight all of us, the Taoiseach described the 83% welfare cut, from €232 per week to a miserable €38.80, as ‘fair’ when, demonstrably it is no such thing. Brutal is a more accurate description.

We have already spent around €2.5bn on Ukrainian refugees. But the question is: what price do we put on freedom? Because if Ukraine is defeated, democracy in Europe is threatened again, as in the Hitler years, and it is absolutely certain that this time Ireland will not be able to stay out of it, untouched and unharmed on our little island fortress on the edge of Europe. The world has changed too much to allow us that comfort.

It should be noted that around 19,000 Ukrainians are now working here, so the people most affected by the cuts are those who cannot work, for whatever reason. If that’s not an attack on the weak, then what is?

MICHAEL McGrath says the move means that all Ukrainian refugees – those who arrived here before and after last March (when welfare payments were first cut) – will now be treated equally. But he ignores the fact that the Government could have ‘equalised up’, rather than down.

There could also have been a midway approach whereby all qualifying refugees would get, say, €100 a week. Was that not even considered?

There are two key political reasons, however, for these cowardly welfare cuts, which the Government will never admit. The first is that difficulty in accommodating refugees acts as a constant political embarrassment for a Government still struggling and failing to solve the housing crisis.

The second reason is potentially even more serious – the surge in far-right sentiment. Against the background of the Dublin riots last November and widespread arson attacks all over the country, the Government has been startled by the growth in extremist, antiimmigrant activism which has now infiltrated politics in a manner that threatens mainstream parties in the upcoming local and European elections. They’re scared and they’re showing it.

So they’re in retreat mode because of bullying and terror tactics. Violence – and the threat of more to come – is now influencing government policy.

It’s a familiar pattern of democrats pulled to the extremes. We’ve seen it all before, and it always ends in tears because those who hate democracy are never satisfied, no matter what the concession, until freedom is destroyed.

Is that what we’re facing now?