No limit on Ukrainan refugees entering State, says Taoiseach

Taoiseach Micheál Martin has dismissed the idea of putting caps on the number of Ukrainian refugees arriving in Ireland as he confirmed that the country has already received unprecedented numbers after accepting more than 25,000 people in just over two months.

Mr Martin said accepting Ukrainian refugees would undoubtedly pose a challenge for Ireland. And he noted the fact that the 25,000 that Ireland has accepted since war broke out early in March compares with the 100,000 refugees and asylum seekers who have come to Ireland since 1999.

“I’m not talking about caps, I am not contemplating that – as I say there will be challenges. We are part of a European-wide response and first and foremost, we are not a military power, the thing we can do best is humanitarian . . . it’s a shared humanity.

“We have to do everything we can to protect women and children and the vulnerable in the first instance and that’s what we are going to do along with our European colleagues because it was clear to me when I spoke to the prime minister of the Ukraine last week, this war has many aspects.

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“One is a direct attack on civilians, an attack on the sovereignty of Ukraine, the creation of an energy crisis by Putin, the creation of a food crisis by Putin and the creation of a humanitarian crisis by migration and he wants Europe to buckle.”

Mr Martin said that aside from the numbers of refugees arriving being unprecedented the conflict was also unprecedented in terms of the manner in which the Russian military was “targeting civilian residential zones . . . levelling of towns and creating terror”.

But Mr Martin rejected the idea of appointing a single official or a single agency to deal with Ukrainian refugees. He said the best way to meet the challenge was a multiagency and multidepartmental response.

“I met with the [humanitarian] organisations last Friday. We had a very constructive engagement . . . every Government department, every Government agency has to be involved

“This has to be multigovernmental in terms of multidepartmental within Government . . . in terms of how Government and departments work,” said Mr Martin as he paid tribute to public servants for the manner in which they have responded to the challenge.

Speaking after a visit to Green Glens complex in Millstreet, north Cork, where he met dozens of Ukrainian refugees who had fled the conflict in eastern Europe Mr Martin said it was important to remember that Ukraine and the rest of Europe was still in the emergency phase of the war.

“I’ve been very moved to meet with so many of the Ukrainian residents here, so many families who have flown the war in Ukraine. And one cannot but be struck by their sense of gratitude, their basic simple gratitude articulated so eloquently and sincerely by them

“You also get a sense of peace and safety and security they have here now for their children and you get that too in the articulation of the journeys that they have travelled to get here – that’s very clear in the conversations we had. I spoke to one woman with a six-month-old baby, for example.

“I spoke to another mother here who told me that her children were in a basement in their home for two weeks, they couldn’t talk, it was lights out at night, every night, for fear of Russian soldiers would come in to arrest them or whatever.

“One woman actually said to me that when they hear planes going overhead here they get a shudder and they get nervous. So in the first instance Ireland is offering respite from that war, from that trauma, and we should not lose sight of that.

“We are a part of a European-wide response to give safe haven in the first instance to the people of Ukraine, to the mothers and children, their gratitude. And what has overwhelmed them, and I need to say this, is the kindness of the Irish people, saying they are so kind here.”

Move to reassure

Mr Martin acknowledged Ireland has to do more particularly from tomorrow when Ukrainian children will start going to school. But school principals and teachers will start meeting the parents and while some parents he had met were worried, the Government had moved to reassure them.

“It can’t be parked away to some agency . . . everybody has to work on this in terms of the best interest of the Ukrainians, who are here with us now and also in terms of Ireland’s response of integration and doing as best we can under very exceptional circumstances coming hot on the heels of Covid pandemic.

“It has been very challenging for all the public service these last few years. I’m very conscious of that but I want to again salute officials across many Government departments, 99 per cent of people have a PPS number already, our schools are already working very well, notwithstanding the obvious challenges.

“I want to thank the public servants across all of our agencies, across all of our Government departments – Roderic O’Gorman and his department for really pulling out all the stops in very quick time to absorb such large numbers and that needs to be said not withstanding that we have challenges ahead.

“I want an end to the war . . . we have to keep the pressure on Putin, not on ourselves. And that’s the fundamental approach of the European Union [which] will be on a range of fronts, the war should end – there is no moral justification for it.”