A leaked Irish government memo has revealed officials' fears that taking in thousands of refugees from Ukraine will increase homelessness and and provoke unrest.
The Irish Independent called the document the “first evidence of concerns at the highest levels of government about the impact of this crisis on communities across the country.”
Some 30,000 Ukrainians have arrived in the Republic of Ireland since the start of Russia's special military operation on 24 February. Of those, 21,000 are seeking state-funded accommodation and only 2,000 have found work.
The memo reportedly expressed fears about the impact on public services, transport, travel and the Irish tourism industry.
Officials said supporting refugees would impact the “wider population,” highlighting “the unsustainability of that very model of humanitarian response, additional budgetary pressures, and increased demand for public services” — of which some already have “unmet demand.”
The projections were based on an assumption of 250 daily new arrivals from Ukraine, fewer than the average so far of 335 per day.
The country of just 5 million inhabitants has long suffered a housing crisis with a chronic shortage of homes to either rent or buy, with an entire generation set to be priced out of home ownership.
In March, the coalition government said it wanted to slap a "punitive" Local Property Tax surcharge on owners of the estimated 112,000 vacant houses and flats in the country in a bid to force them to rent or sell their properties.
The United Nations estimates that 6.4 million people have left Ukraine in the first three months of the conflict, almost all to neighbouring countries. Some 3.5 million have taken shelter in Poland and 900,000 in Romania. The Russian Emergencies Ministry says over 1.4 million people from Donbass and Ukraine have been welcomed into Russia.