Leo Varadkar, the tanaiste, has offered a spare bedroom in his Dublin home to a Ukrainian refugee, he said last night. Speaking after meeting refugees in Dublin airport, Varadkar said he and his partner, Matt Barrett, had registered with the Irish Red Cross.
Varadkar has also said he intends to talk to Irish airlines about helping with the crisis, saying this was not the time for them to try to increase profits.
Larysa Gerasko, Ukraine’s ambassador to Ireland, is meeting Eamon Ryan, the transport minister, this week to discuss the level of fares being charged by Ryanair for flights from countries neighbouring Ukraine. “I’m looking forward to meeting the ambassador of Ukraine and seeing what we can do to help,” Ryan said yesterday.
Gerasko told the Oireachtas committee on EU affairs last week her country would be “grateful” for free charter flights to bring refugees to Ireland. She said she had written to Ryanair about the prices it is charging, which she described as “immoral”, but had no reply.
The airline did not respond to requests for comment this weekend, but its chief executive, Michael O’Leary, has denied that Ryanair has deliberately inflated fares for refugees since the Russian invasion.
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Yesterday Ryanair was charging 810.70 Polish zloty (€171.78) for a one-way seat from Warsaw to Dublin on Friday and 935.44 zloty (€198.21) for a flight from Krakow to Dublin on Thursday.
Anna Sochaska, Poland’s ambassador to Ireland, said she was “shocked” when she learnt of the carrier’s increased fares, which she called “disgraceful”.
“My first reaction was that I would need to contact Ryanair asking it to change its policy because there are so many airlines that do not do such things,” Sochaska said.
Anastasiya Sytnyk, a Ukrainian student in Dublin who is trying to get her family to join her, said they had planned to fly from Poland to Ireland today but could not afford the air fares. “The only flight that is semi-affordable is next Friday. It’s very difficult,” she told The Irish Times last week.
O’Leary has said that when flights fill up, the prices naturally increase due to the reduced supply. “We have very low-fare flights coming to and from Poland,” he said last week. “All of the airports — we’ve checked into it — and all the flights are filling up, and as they fill up they pay the highest fares. But we have on today, tomorrow and in the coming days fares of €20 one way, €50 one way. There’s loads of cheap flights out there.”
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Aer Lingus did not comment when it was asked if it would provide cheap or free flights for war refugees.
Wizz Air, the Hungarian low-cost carrier, has offered holders of Ukrainian passports 100,000 free seats on flights leaving cities in the region. It is also selling €29.99 “rescue fares” for some other flights, and has set up a dedicated booking website.
More than two million Ukrainians have crossed the border into Poland, with the number expected to rise to five million.
The government agreed at a cabinet meeting last week that Ireland will take 500 Ukrainian refugees from Moldova. Some 350,000 people have fled the war over the Moldovan border.
“Ireland can probably organise some chartered flights,” Larisa Miculet, the Moldovan ambassador to Ireland, told the Oireachtas committee.
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“We will probably first need to transport the refugees to the airport of a nearby country, perhaps Romania, from where they can be taken to other places.”
So far, 9,000 war refugees from Ukraine have arrived in Ireland and officials here are planning for a total of 18,000-21,000 to be here by March 31. More than 1,500 are expected this weekend.
Gerry Horkan, a Fianna Fail senator and the convenor of the Ireland-Romania interparliamentary friendship group, said the high demand for airline seats should not dictate the prices being asked of displaced Ukrainians.
“If I can get a flight to Cyprus for €10 under the algorithm, Ryanair should be able to fly a significant number of people to areas of refuge at no cost,” he said. “These people do not want to have to travel. They would prefer to remain in Ukraine.”
