Speaking on the Hard Shoulder Fine Gael’s Regina Doherty, the leader of Seanad Eireann, has urged the government to ignore the needs and will of the “local people” and focus on building homes for Ukrainian refugees.
There were 54,000 Ukrainian refugees in Ireland as of the beginning of October and their needs on top of the historic housing and homelessness crisis has seen the needs of Irish people sink even lower on the priority list.
As the crisis worsens Children’s Minister Roderic O’Gorman has said pausing the right of Ukrainians to come to Ireland “cannot be discounted”.
The Fine Gael stalwart, however, has rejected this calling it “unnecessary and immoral”.
Having over 10,000 Irish citizens, 4,000 of whom are children, homeless while tens of thousands more face an impossible task of getting on the inflated property ladder languishing in misery is seemingly not immoral in Doherty’s eyes.
“It isn’t acceptable that we can say – as some people would like to say – that ‘Ireland is full up’ because we absolutely are not,” she told The Hard Shoulder on Newstalk.
Comparing apples to oranges, the Senator stated that Ukraine’s neighbours such as Moldova and Poland have taken in more refugees per capita.
This is cold comfort to the Irish children living in temporary accommodation or the young Irish couples who have to refrain from having a family as they are unable to acquire a home.
Doherty’s cynical disregard for the “local people” no doubt reflects the general mood of Fine Gael and the government in general but fortunately for her she doesn’t rely on the votes of the people as her seat was gifted to in June 2020 by then Taoiseach Leo Varadkar.
Tell us your thoughts in the Facebook post and share this with your friends.