Irish Left With Ukraine – Neither Moscow nor Washington

Press Statement – Government decision ‘heartless and cruel’ and must be opposed says Irish Left With Ukraine

Irish Left With Ukraine (ILWU) has condemned as “heartless and cruel” the government decision to withdraw accommodation supports for Ukrainian refugees, and has called on the trade union movement and all progressive forces to immediately launch a campaign to “reject firmly the government’s pandering to anti-immigrant sentiment.”

“In the midst of a housing crisis, the threat to throw 16,000 Ukrainians out of state-provided accommodation will mean evicting many of these people into homelessness,” said ILWU in a statement. “It will mean people being uprooted from their communities, children having to leave schools in which they are settled and have made classmates and friends, and people having to quit their jobs.

Alongside this, the decision to cut and eventually end altogether the Accommodation Recognition Payment will impact directly on a further 42,000 people who are currently accommodated in people’s homes across the country.

The combined effect of these two heartless measures will be to force people fleeing a country still under brutal invasion, and who do not qualify for the Housing Assistance Payment (HAP) due to their Temporary Protection Status, into competing for housing in the already overcrowded and extremely expensive private rental market.

The ARP has provided a lifeline for Ukrainians fleeing the war and has allowed Irish families to support them. As a payment made directly to Irish families – in urban and rural communities across the country – it is money that has stayed in local communities through spending in shops and on local services.

Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine continues unabated. Many Ukrainian towns and cities have suffered widespread destruction, there have been almost 600,000 Ukrainian casualties – including killed, wounded and missing – and 5.7 million Ukrainian people have been forced to flee their country. In this context, it is wrong that the government should move to remove these vital supports.

Irish people and communities have shown their solidarity and support for Ukrainians fleeing the war and the ARP has helped this to happen by reducing pressure on the housing market by supporting Irish families to host refugees.

We call on the government to reverse their decision to withdraw these accommodation supports. We further call on the trade union movement and all progressive forces to immediately launch a campaign to state clearly that we, as a society, stand firmly on the side of Ukrainian war refugees and reject firmly the government’s pandering to anti-immigrant sentiment.”

Irish Left With Ukraine is an activist group established by activists from different traditions of the left in Ireland, united in support of Ukraine’s right to resist invasion.