Rita Brady is one of more than 24,000 people in Ireland who have offered accommodation to Ukrainian refugees. The 47-year-old artist has a spare room in her house in a quiet village in Co Louth. After offering it to the Red Cross three weeks ago and hearing nothing back, she posted the details in a Facebook group. Within a week, Maisa Lisovets, an 84-year-old grandmother, arrived to stay.
Lisovets, who has lived in Zaporozhye her entire life, fled with her daughter and four dogs, on March 9. Once they arrived in Warsaw, they stayed in a hotel, before her daughter set off to drive the rest of the way to Ireland with the dogs. Lisovets stayed with a volunteer in Poland, who helped her get to the airport, and she flew to Shannon on Friday.
Her grandson, Vitaliy Khumra, who has lived in Dublin for five years, said that Lisovets is nervous about coming to Ireland as she does not speak English. Khumra’s father and paternal grandparents are still in Ukraine.
“I know that war is an awful thing, and they can go through a lot of emotions,” said Brady, who is originally from Lithuania. “All I can do is just support as much as I can.”
Seeing another former Soviet Union country being invaded brought “flashbacks” of preparing to defend her home town in Lithuania after the fall of the Berlin Wall, when she was 15. Though Russian soldiers never arrived, she said that her town was ready for them. She moved to Ireland in 2006 for economic reasons, and stayed after meeting her Irish husband.
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Brady speaks Russian, and hopes she can provide support and a sense of safety to Maisa. “If she would become part of my life, I would be only glad, because I feel like I did something small for a country which is really struggling now.”
About 9,000 Ukrainans have arrived in Ireland since the start of the war, one third of them children, with estimates that up to 100,000 may come.
On arrival, they are granted “temporary protection”, which means they can stay in Ireland for at least a year, work, receive social welfare, and access healthcare, education and training. A reception centre has been set up at Dublin airport to act as a “one-stop shop”.
If a person is not staying with family or friends, the government will arrange accommodation. International Protection Accommodation Services is responsible for the provision of accommodation and services to people in the asylum process. It has placed at least 2,589 people in temporary accommodation so far, and is planning to ramp up its operations.
The Red Cross, which is officially co-ordinating accommodation for refugees, said they will initially stay in a hotel for about three weeks. The charity will then work to match them with more permanent accommodation, such as with families.
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More than 19,000 pledges of accommodation have been made through the Red Cross, with a further 5,000 through other charities. The initial focus will be to place refugees in vacant houses, before moving on to shared accommodation, which the Red Cross said represents about three quarters of pledges. It is understood the government is considering providing accommodation to hundreds of refugees at the Green Glens arena in Millstreet, Co Cork, and at the National Show Centre in Dublin. There are also talks with religious institutions about offering spaces at their properties.
The Red Cross requires a commitment of six to 12 months from those offering spare rooms. If offering a “stand-alone” property, the location must have access to public transport. If offering a room, there needs to be some sense of privacy. Volunteers will come to check out the accommodation. Initially there will be no garda vetting of people offering rooms, but the government is working with organisations on making arrangements for this.
The Department of Education said schools that have the capacity will welcome Ukrainian children in the “usual” way. It has been reported that a departmental analysis has identified tens of thousands of spare places in the primary and post-primary sectors. Supports for children to learn English are being provided.
Michael Duffy, a psychotherapist specialising in PTSD and complex grief at Queen’s University Belfast, said it is important for people fleeing war to feel safe and secure and that they be provided with practical care. Systems need to be in place to integrate them into society.
Refugees could have experienced a range of traumatic experiences, and may have been exposed to violence. They may be in shock, emotionally numb or anxious, and experiencing uncertainty and grieving what they left behind.
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Duffy said people supporting refugees need to listen without putting pressure on people to talk. While refugees do have the resilience to cope with what they’ve experienced, hosts should be looking out for evidence of long-term psychological distress, such as people going over traumatic experiences again and again in their minds, which can create a sense of helplessness.
“We’ve got to compensate for their new-found distrust in human beings, because what has happened to their society is really a form of abuse. It’s been invaded,” he said.
“It’s important that we, as a society, reach out to and display the positive side of human nature — empathy, warmth, acceptance, trust, and a genuine desire to care and help.”
