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It seems insensitive to suggest but what Ukrainian refugees arriving in Ireland most need is a czar. Spontaneous positivity rose up to meet the nearly 25,000 who have arrived. If paltry compared with the 4.5 million who left Ukraine, it is the largest inward migration of refugees in the history of this State. A mostly ad hoc approach achieved a lot in a short time. The nub of the issue now is that as a longer term looms, can the Government systemise its relatively successful first steps?
It is pure speculation as to how many more may come, or how long they remain. Government, NGOs and communities are working well to provide basic accommodation. The Department of Education is trying to move ahead of the curve by putting supports into schools. The main support in the EU for Ukrainian refugees is the Temporary Protection Directive of 2001. It assures access to employment, education and more.
The nub of the problem is housing. The underlying issue is that this scale of migration is totally unlike “programme” refugees, from the Vietnamese boat people over 40 years ago to recent arrivals from Syria. Those were literally bespoke programmes where considerable assistance was in place for refugees and their hosts.
A Government-wide plan, with firm leadership of the head-knocking and butt-kicking sort at the centre, is urgently required
Ad hoc solutions being offered up now are low-hanging fruit and rapidly running out. If numbers arriving are ebbing somewhat, they will rapidly rise under the pressure of another Russian onslaught. The Department of Children, responsible for integration, has borne the brunt so far and acquitted itself well. But the move-on to an imminent medium term, not to mention an indefinite longer term, is a matter for the Department of Housing. They were not early movers in this cause, and are clearly under pressure to deliver on existing targets in Housing for All. As the numbers of arriving Ukrainians ballooned, and the issue became unavoidable, there have been meetings about meetings but as yet no clear plans.
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Holiday homes, vacant properties, Airbnbs and modular housing are apparently in the mix. To confuse matters there was loose talk about rule changes to the Fair Deal scheme allowing a nursing home resident keep 60 per cent, not 20 per cent, of the rental income from their property. That may have a small positive effect on an otherwise shrinking private rental market. It will have no direct effect for Ukrainians who will not receive Housing Assistance Payment (HAP).
This brings me back to the czar. Today, the Government has neither the systems nor the politics in place to sustain the initial burst of positivity. To do that, a Government-wide plan, with firm leadership of the head-knocking and butt-kicking sort at the centre, is urgently required.
The Government's first two years were consumed by Covid-19. Its remaining time will be dominated by housing, energy, inflation and Ukraine
A recurring theme among NGOs is the need for much more effective co-ordination and leadership. And that brings me to the politics. Positive momentum must be maintained, for much longer term, and perhaps for much greater numbers requiring support. To deliver, radical decisions are needed around our housing model and how it is procured. This won’t happen unilaterally within the Department of Housing.
If this is really an emergency we need to sharply compress the public spending code and prepare to risk prioritising delivery over the cost of time taken to deliver complex value-for-money criteria. Local authorities should go into the market, particularly outside Dublin, and buy sites with existing planning permission. We need to capitalise local authorities to buy a significant proportion of the 90,000 vacant homes out there. None of this will happen in-scale or at all under current policy. If modular housing is to be considered, it cannot become Mosney-style accommodation for the future.
At right angles to the Ukrainian issue, but centre stage in the relationship between the Departments of Housing and the Department of Children, is the fact that a commitment to end direct provision in the life of this Government is now derailed. Sitting beside that fact is another. Nearly 2,000 refugees are cleared to leave direct provision and move on into the community but can’t because they can’t find accommodation. Half of those have been in the situation for over two years. Related to those facts is another. The Dublin Region Homeless Executive reported that 74 families entered emergency accommodation for the first time in January 2022, an increase of 34 on December 2021. Tellingly, in January 2022, just 35 families exited emergency accommodation into new tenancies compared to 81 a year before. There is a shrinking pool of private rented accommodation, and that is the nexus of an interconnected set of problems.
The Government’s first two years were consumed by Covid-19. Its remaining time will be dominated by housing, energy, inflation and Ukraine. As with Covid, the refugee issue demonstrates there is capacity to move at speed in a crisis. What is also clear is that the underlying administrative stasis of the State has the capacity to outlast every crisis undisturbed. The heaviest burdens are now falling on some of the weakest parts of the civil service. There is already a human toll of exhaustion after Covid. There is an intellectual tiredness in a system where too many at the top stay too long. Those are bigger issues but the immediate political imperative is to superimpose an overriding structure to deliver what business as usual cannot. There must be someone in charge.