Paul Murphy Slams Cuts to Ukrainian Refugee Support Payments

Fine Gael's manifesto for the last general election said Fine Gael will stand with Ukraine for as long as it takes We will unequivocally support Ukraine That promise, like all the other promises of this government lasted around 100 days It wasn't worth the paper that it was written on One of the first things that this government is doing is slashing supports to Ukrainian people who have fled here by cutting the accommodation recognition payment from 100 euros to 600 euros a month The government started kicking Ukrainian refugees out of hotels ahead of the elections last year in an attempt to appease the far right As a result, since last May the percentage of Ukrainian refugees relying on the accommodation recognition payment has risen from 27% to 46% So one in two Ukrainian refugees now reliant upon this payment So this cut will have an immediate impact on nearly half of all Ukrainian refugees living in this state Currently 37,500 people relying on this payment to keep a roof over their heads The government knows that many hosts wouldn't be doing it if they weren't getting the 800 euros In one survey, three quarters of hosts said that they would not be able to continue accommodating Ukrainians if the payment is cut An even higher percentage, 86% have told the Irish Red Cross that the payment is important to them continuing to host So the government knows that cutting this payment will mean families are evicted onto the streets forced to return to an active war zone or, in those circumstances where families can, into the private rental market and adding to pressure there The points have been made repeatedly that this makes no financial sense I actually don't think this is an example of kind of petty penny-pinching by the government I think the government knows this is going to cost them more money than it's saving But this is, they're willing to spend money on performative, expensive cruelty It's like the chartered deportation flights They make no sense in economic terms It's an extraordinarily expensive way of deporting people But it's about the theatre Similarly, this is about saying to people Don't worry, we're dealing with these Ukrainians Look, we've cut the payment from €800 to €600 Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil, Lowry-Lackey government is so right-wing that they're more interested in pandering to anti-immigration sentiment and the far-right than in preventing even more families than becoming homeless While the government and Fine Gael champions the idea of supporting Ukraine and standing with Ukraine I have to say, it's disgraceful that Sinn Féin's amendment urges the government to go even further in their attacks on refugees This is part of a failed tactic where Sinn Féin chase after the far-right for votes It didn't work during the last two elections last year In fact, it disastrously backfired by centering the issue of immigration and problematising the issue of immigration and taking pressure off the government as being responsible for the housing crisis, the cost-of-living crisis and everything else suggesting that actually the problem is immigrants, which is wrong All it means is that Sinn Féin ends up participating in attacks on refugee families and making those attacks even worse You don't even gain anything politically You just cede more and more ground to the far-right and honest people, ordinary people, see you as being dishonest see you as flip-flopping Rather than dividing the working class by attacking particular groups and pitting people against each other we should be fighting for universal, non-means-tested payments for higher wages, for universal public housing for all we should be trying to lift the level at which we treat refugees not dragging it down That's how we fight the far-right addressing poverty and inequality that they exploit not by making poverty and inequality even worse