Housing refugees in tents during the winter is “not appropriate”, Cathal Crowe TD has said.
Since Russia’s invasion of their nation, over 60,000 Ukrainians have moved to Ireland and the State has struggled to find appropriate accommodation for many of them.
Some have been housed in school buildings over the Christmas holiday, while others have been put up in tents.
Currently, there are 88 people living in tents in Knockalisheen - which is part of Mr Crowe’s Clare constituency - and there are concerns about how well they will withstand the winter weather.
Ukrainians refugees at the train station in Lviv. Photo by Alfred Yaghobzadeh/ABACAPRESS.COM Credit: Abaca Press/Alamy Live News“The weather is unpredictable any day of the year,” Mr Crowe told Newstalk.
“We typically in the last years had a string of early spring storms.
“These tents aren’t, to my mind, storm tough.
“They certainly don’t stand up well when you have snow and ice conditions like we had in early December.
“It’s not appropriate accommodation.”
'We can no longer guarantee accommodation'
Late last year, then Taoiseach Leo Varadkar described the arrival of so many refugees in Ireland as an “enormous challenge” and said the State could not guarantee them housing.
“We do have to tell people the truth,” he said.
“We have to tell people who might come here from Ukraine or come here from other parts of the world seeking asylum that we have now reached the point where we can no longer guarantee accommodation for everyone who arrives here - and that’s the truth.
“It’s a sad truth but it is the truth.”
Main image: Tented accommodation for Ukrainians. Picture by: Roinn an Taoisigh.
