People who offered accommodation for Ukrainians to be contacted by next week

All members of the public who have offered to house Ukrainian refugees in spare rooms should expect to be contacted by the end of next week, the Irish Red Cross has said.

The organisation has received more than 24,000 voluntary pledges of accommodation, either vacant properties or spare bedrooms in occupied homes.

The Irish Red Cross has initially focused its efforts on contacting people who had offered vacant homes to house incoming Ukrainian refugees fleeing the war with Russia, ahead of offers of spare rooms.

Members of the Defence Forces and call centre staff have been working in recent weeks to contact those who have offered accommodation to refugees, seeking to arrange assessments of the properties to confirm they would be suitable.

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Liam O'Dwyer, general secretary of the Irish Red Cross, said calls had been made to around 13,000 of those who had pledged accommodation so far.

There were a further 11,000 property owners who the charity was aiming to have contacted by the end of next week, he told The Irish Times.

Mr O’Dwyer said the charity expected all those who offered vacant properties would be contacted by this Thursday, at which point the focus would shift to contacting people who had offered rooms in shared homes.

The Irish Red Cross had “handed over” just under 1,000 properties pledged by the public to the Department of Equality, who were responsible for placing refugees into the homes with the help of local authorities, he said.

Some 21,000 refugees have arrived into the country from Ukraine, with about 13,000 being put up in State-provided accommodation, such as hotel rooms.

There is growing concern in Government about the shrinking capacity in hotels and the hospitality sector, with an expectation that facilities providing emergency tented accommodation will be required in the coming weeks.

Members of the Irish public have donated more than €30 million to the Irish Red Cross Ukrainian appeal since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in late February.

Charlie Lamson, the charity’s head of fundraising, said much of those funds had been sent directly to the conflict zone and Red Cross organisations in neighbouring countries, such as Poland and Slovakia, to provide basic supplies such as water, food, medicine and shelter to refugees.

The donated funds were also being used to support Ukrainians arriving in Ireland with €100 vouchers for clothing and hygiene products, he told RTÉ radio’s Today with Claire Byrne show.