Thousands More Homes Needed as Some Ukrainian Refugees to Stay ‘Permanently’ – Minister

Up to 35,000 new homes need to be built in Ireland to accommodate Ukrainian refugees in Ireland, many of which — according to one Minister — may never leave the country.

Ireland’s Housing Minister, Darragh O’Brien, has told the public that thousands of houses need to be built in order to accommodate refugees “for a sustained period of time”, according to a report by The Journal, before going on to say that many would remain in Ireland for good.

“We’ve seen the devastation that has been festered upon some of the cities there,” the housing minister said. “They’ll be, you know, uninhabitable for a number of years.”

“It is more than likely that many of our Ukrainian friends that are here are going to stay for a sustained period of time,” he continued. “We are going to have to look at providing permanent housing solutions in that space some of the research that we’ve done and work that we’ve done in relation to planning for this, we could potentially require up to an additional 35,000 homes over the period of time should we be looking at permanently accommodating.”

The revelation comes as the Irish cabinet is told to expect 30,000 more refugees to land on their country’s shores by the end of April.

Meanwhile, the cost to the Irish taxpayer for supporting refugees from Ukraine may rise as high as €2.5 billion, or nearly 3 per cent of the Irish government’s yearly revenue of €84.5 billion, going off figures from 2020.

While some nations — such as the United Kingdom — have taken a careful approach to accepting refugees fleeing the conflict in Ukraine, the Irish government is proudly on record as taking an open borders “humanitarian response” to the crisis, taking in vast numbers of applicants.

As a result, this approach may well result in as many as 200,000 refugees entering Ireland, equivalent to four per cent of its total population.

To put this in perspective, such a number would be roughly equivalent to the United States taking in as many as 13.3 million people.

However, this approach has recently raised a number of eyebrows both at home and abroad, after a video of one local journalist interviewing a number of men claiming to be refugees escaping the crisis went viral online.

One of the men who — while claiming to hold Ukrainian citizenship — said that they were originally from Kashmir and claimed that they were sixty years of age, and hence too old to be conscripted by Ukraine to fight Russia. The claim of their ages, at least, has been treated with some scepticism.