Taoiseach rejects claims he blindsided Tánaiste on plans for Ukrainian refugees

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has rejected claims he had “blindsided” the Tanaiste and Fianna Fail leader by allowing Minister for Integration Roderic O’Gorman to bring forward proposals on changing the benefits regime for Ukrainian refugees.

He was speaking after tensions flared in Cabinet on Tuesday over a proposal to limit State accommodation for Ukrainian refugees to 90 days.

“No, that’s not the case,” he said when asked to respond to the claim of blindsiding the Tánaiste as he arrived for a European Council summit in Brussels. “In fairness, I think the Tánaiste said that’s not the case. This is a row that is being exaggerated.

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“Minister O’Gorman has proposals for some time, they’ve been discussed at leaders’ level and at Cabinet sub-committee level as well. He asked for permission to raise something at the meeting which I gave, and that’s not an unusual thing at all.”

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Mr Varadkar said there are no firm proposals yet on potentially reducing social welfare payments to Ukrainian refugees. He said Minister for Social Protection Heather Humphreys was examining the issue.

“We’ve welcomed nearly 100,000 Ukrainians to Ireland,” he told reporters in Brussels. “Really proud that we’ve done that as a country, provided accommodation, food, shelter, healthcare, education, jobs, income. But it does makes sense that we align what we offer in Ireland to what other western European countries are offering because of the issue of secondary movements.

“That’s what we’re looking at at the moment. We are a country that is full of compassion, but we unfortunately have limited capacity, particularly when it comes to accommodation, and that’s the context to what’s being examined at the moment. But there is no decision made.”

He added: “Other countries have lower rates and other countries limit the time for which they offer any social welfare support. Social welfare support in Ireland is indefinite. That’s not the case in a lot of European countries. But it’s not going to be a case of just working out whatever the EU average is, you know, we have a higher cost of living, for example, than other countries and other countries pay welfare rates differently to refugees, depending on whether or not they’re provided accommodation.

“In Ireland, we provide accommodation to people who have come to Ireland from Ukraine, and also full social welfare. That doesn’t happen for Irish people in general and wouldn’t be the norm in other European countries.”

Mr Varadkar said the proposals could not just focus on accommodation.

“Having an extra 100,000 people in your country is always going to have an impact on housing, healthcare, education – that’s just a statement of the obvious,” he said.

“But, of course, anything we do, any change we make, has to take into account the impact that it might have on housing, on our schools, on healthcare, on everything else. So that work is really still ongoing. It can’t just be about accommodation. We have to look at the whole thing in the round, and we are.”

Separately, Minister for Further and Higher Education Simon Harris said the “status quo” of providing free and unlimited accommodation for Ukrainian refugees cannot continue.

Mr Harris said Ireland has stood “full square” behind the people of Ukraine since day one of the invasion, but that it was important to ensure supports for refugees are sustainable.

“Ireland has risen, I believe, to the humanitarian challenge presented by war on the continent of Europe, in a really quite incredible way. We have welcomed in nearly 100,000 people,” Mr Harris said.

“We’ve welcomed them into our communities, we’ve supported them, we’ve seen them in our education system, we’ve seen that in our schools — tens of thousands of people in further education, learning English and other things.

" I think what is also absolutely clear, you have to be honest about this, the status quo can’t continue. We have to be supportive of Ukraine, but we also have to look at the entire package that we can provide to make sure it’s sustainable. We want to be able to continue to support, so it is done from a place of good as many European countries are doing,” he said.

“We’ve seen this already done in some areas around medical cards and the likes in recent months. So, we are not the first European country, in fact, I would reckon we’re one of the very last European countries to actually look and say we want to continue to support Ukraine but how do we make sure what we’re doing is sustainable.” - Additional Reporting: PA