Over 5,700 empty homes offered to Irish Red Cross for Ukrainian refugees
Aiden Lonergan, National Director of Community Support at the Irish Red Cross, welcoming Svitlana Vitske, a Ukrainian Refugee at Shannon Airport last month. Picture: Brendan Gleeson
More than 5,700 empty homes have been offered to the Irish Red Cross to help house Ukrainian refugees.
According to the charity's secretary-general, Liam O'Dwyer, Irish Red Cross representatives will have reached out to all those who offered the houses by the end of the day.
Mr O'Dwyer says about 40% of the initial offers have now been followed up on with assessments due to be carried out soon.
At that stage, Ukrainian refugees in need of the homes can be placed he said.
He said the charity will also be sending emails to further 2,200 or so individuals who they have so far been unable to reach for various reasons.
Mr O'Dwyer also noted that 16% of the offers the Irish Red Cross initially received had been rescinded.
Close to 23,000 Ukrainian refugees have arrived in the country since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began seven weeks ago.
A further 3,000 to 9,000 are expected to arrive over the Easter Bank Holiday weekend.
He said that finding housing for those who arrived was "hugely challenging because of the numbers involved."
"The telephone calls that are being made are quite detailed and they could last 10, 12 minutes."
He said the Red Cross has enlisted another call centre to help contact all the people who offered accommodation.
"We want to move this on because we obviously have quite a substantial number of shared accommodation and we want to ensure that everybody has been rung and contacted properly," he told .
Mr O'Dwyer said the charity's shared home scheme was proving more of a challenge than the vacant home scheme, but that this was expected.
He said the Irish Red Cross was well positioned to address the challenge and that scheme works well because there was "an enrichment on both sides."
On the issue of refugees having to stay a while in warehouses, community halls and sports centres, and other buildings, Mr O'Dwyer said "none of that is what any of us would want."
"These are emergency responses in an emergency time, and what we need to do is make certain the move on accommodation is ready as soon as possible."
