Liam Quaide (Cork East, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I would also like to welcome our Ukrainian dignitaries and friends this evening.

Monday marked the third anniversary of Russia's brutal and illegal invasion of Ukraine. The Ukrainian people have shown heroic courage fighting off Russian aggression over the past three years. Eight years prior to that full-scale invasion, parts of eastern Ukraine were seized by Russia and the local population in these occupied regions have lived under a reign of terror since. The broader Ukrainian population is now facing an extension of that reign of terror within land that may be permanently occupied by Russia under a so-called peace deal forged by Putin and Trump.

In 2022, we welcomed Ukrainian refugees to this country in large numbers. They are now, after integrating into our communities, being crudely uprooted as we enter new political headwinds. In my constituency of Cork East, a large group of Ukrainian residents were served with an inhumane, emotionally detached eviction notice in January. The residents have become part of the local community in east Cork. They have children attending schools and are working locally. The families are contributing to the local community and economy. This crude eviction notice jarred fundamentally with the integrated, connected lives the families have created in east Cork. In a further cruel twist, they were told they could not bring pets to their new accommodation, and we have heard similar eviction stories around the country since January. There is clearly a calcifying of political attitudes towards Ukrainian refugees that is very worrying.

The eviction notice for the Ukrainian residents in Youghal has been paused and while this is welcome, they are now plunged into another type of constant stress and worry; a limbo in which they know that their current living circumstances are going to change outside of their control yet they have no sense of when that will happen or what exactly it will involve.

When, as a Government, we invite people to seek refuge here and promote the idea if not always the practice of integration then the Government has a duty to not just suddenly uproot those families and sunder them from their connections at the point when they are actually integrated, and doing this purely because political fashions have changed. As Ukraine is being discarded by the US Government and thrown to the wolves in the Kremlin, decency and compassion and sensible planning need to win out over populist reactivity in our policies towards their refugee population here. What is the Government’s plan for the Ukrainian refugee population here? Is there one? People need to plan their lives. They should not be at the mercy of a reactive, knee-jerk politics.

See this speech in context