Ukrainians in Kerry: ‘For me it’s a shock. No public transport. It’s too far from everything’
The three generations of the Malomolkina family, Svitlana, Kosta, Anna, and Alina, from Mariupol and who are now living in Caherciveen, Co Kerry. Picture: Alan Landers
Kerry has welcomed its new Ukrainian population enthusiastically, but its towns need matching commitment from the Government in terms of services provided.
With services in Kerry stretched as it is, there is a worry that they could be at their limit for the existing and new communities alike, according to various political, business, and community figures throughout the county’s towns.
Almost 40,000 Ukrainians have arrived in Ireland since February, according to recent data from the CSO.
Some 7,000 Ukrainian children are enrolled in Irish schools, the majority at primary level.
At 668, Kerry’s total of Ukrainian children is only exceeded by Cork and Dublin.
The Oireachtas joint committee on education last week issued a report on the supports needed nationally, including counselling and crisis supports, language supports, and technological needs, such as laptops and iPads for children.
The community in Kerry has been welcoming to its new arrivals but says it, too, needs additional resources to continue supporting them.
Almost overnight, the Russian invasion of Ukraine led to the population of the 1,000-strong Caherciveen going up by a third. The town now has 320 Ukrainian refugees, with as many more in surrounding villages.
Killarney has an estimated 1,500 Ukrainians and the number is set to grow in the coming weeks. There are upwards of 3,000 Ukrainian refugees now in Kerry, most in the tourist belt of Killarney and South Kerry.
The key reason that the International Protection Accommodation Service is sending so many Ukrainians to Kerry is beds. The availability of so much tourist accommodation is key, according to the chief executive of the South Kerry Development Partnership, Noel Spillane.
Mr Spillane chairs the inter-agency forum including health, education, Garda, child welfare, social welfare employment, and community groups. It was set up initially amid the Covid-19 pandemic but was reactivated by Kerry County Council to deal with the challenge of integrating the refugees.
“It’s not just beds — support services are also needed. It is a huge challenge for all of us involved, given the significant numbers,” Mr Spillane said.
Kerry may be reaching its limit, or even past it, in terms of what it can provide for people, despite wanting to help all, he warned.
“If the numbers keep growing we will not be able to deliver the level of services. We are arriving at the limit. That is the view from around the table. We all want to do our best. But we have very significant numbers now in Kerry and it is a challenge,” Mr Spillane said.
Childcare is an issue with schools out, and summer camps for Ukrainian children are being set up. Language is a big challenge, Mr Spillane said, echoing the findings of the Oireachtas education committee.
This week, thanks to extra funding, South Kerry Development Partnership has advertised for two Ukrainian intercultural support workers for Killorglin and Caherciveen.
Placing refugees in “peripheral areas” such as the remote Derrynane Hotel, on the Skellig coast, 3.5km from the nearest village, brings an additional set of challenges, but the Local Link bus service has been brought on board to assist.
The language barrier is one of the major issues for the new arrivals and those trying to interact with them. There are classes in the O’Connell Further Education and Training Centre run by the Kerry Education and Training Board, along with a Fáilte Isteach conversation group.
There is a real effort to reach out — the information and welcome literature at the Skellig accommodation centre, the renamed Skellig Star, is in the Cyrillic script, and includes an integration app, for example.
Yoga and other classes are arranged and the rowing club has become involved, and the schools have given detailed advice.
Two years ago, Covid was raging among direct provision residents in the Skellig Star who were bussed from Dublin, and locals were out on the streets in protest.
This time, it is different, partly because of the needs of Iveragh, the largest peninsula on the south-west coast.
The Ukrainian population is regarded as here to stay in the medium term at the very least, and their story will be part of Iveragh’s, said local councillor Norma Moriarty, when asked why the welcome is so different this time round.
The office of the Fianna Fáil councillor is covered in Ukrainian welcome flags and information.
Iveragh had been “screaming with years” about a downturn in population and it hugely welcomed the arrival of hundreds of Ukrainians, she said.
Other Ukrainian populations in Iveragh are in Caherdaniel and Derrynane (150), Valentia Island (40), Waterville (15), and the Gaeltacht area of Ballinskelligs (80), with schools welcoming a long-awaited increase in their rollbooks, Ms Moriarty said, adding that there has been “a genuine and sincere welcome”.
However, she is under no illusions about the challenges posed by the increase.
With one of only two GPs in Caherciveen set to retire in September, Ms Moriarty, a member of the health forum, said: “What remains the concern is our stretched medical services. It’s a problem they now share with us.”
Mental health services for existing residents, but also for those “traumatised” by war, are almost completely lacking.
Out-of-hours mental health services are practically “non-existent” in south Kerry — the region is at the centre of the Camhs scandal where adolescents attending the HSE clinic in Killarney were overprescribed medication, Ms Moriarty said.
Covid had already had “a huge impact” on the mental health of people in the Iveragh region.
Four months on, the region’s Ukrainian population is beginning to suffer delayed trauma, she warned.
“Until now everyone was in survival mode, but trauma was now settling in. We are part of the State’s response to take care of these people and we don’t want to fail,” she said.
“There will be a Ukrainian mix in South Kerry from now on — this is going to be part of our story,” she said. “They are sharing the problems of the people of South Kerry.”
A crisis café is set to be piloted in Caherciveen, the HSE indicated to Ms Moriarty at the latest health forum meeting. This is something she has been fighting for and it can’t come soon enough, she said.
In Killarney, GPs are already overwhelmed and are on the record saying they have reached the maximum number of patients they can look after. Dr Gary Stack, director of South Doc, said he and his two colleagues have taken 50 each onto their patient lists, but they cannot cope with any more.
Rosemarie Cronin in the South West Kerry Family Resource Centre co-ordinates family support for the large geographical area stretching from Kells to Castlecove along the Ring of Kerry. She said the workload has massively increased.
Strapped for resources before the Ukraine crisis, Ms Cronin wonders where are they going to get much-needed funds to refurbish and pay for a bigger centre for counselling, parenting, and other needs.
“We were already stretched. Our premises is bursting at the seams,” she said.
They have borrowed and collected for a bigger premises, but it needs to be done up and paid for.
“The challenges we are facing with the Ukrainian community we were facing long before. Transport, access to services, waiting lists for therapies, are
the challenges of rural South Kerry — it’s just we have more people now and we also have the challenge of language,” she said.
South Kerry is dependent on tourist money. Worries about the impact of so much tourist and other accommodation used to home refugees are surfacing.
As more and more guesthouses and hotels are signing up to deals with the International Protection Accommodation Service, politicians of all hues will tell you privately of concerns about a potential drop in tourism footfall.
Ukrainian refugees in emergency hotel accommodation into the summer season “is neither good for refugees nor good for tourism”, Fáilte Ireland boss Paul Kelly warned in April.
Speaking before the Oireachtas tourism committee, Mr Kelly said that if core summer tourism accommodation stock is taken out of the system to house Ukrainian refugees, there will be
“significant knock-on impacts elsewhere”.
Nationally, politicians have rejected the suggestion that hotel room prices are increasing because of the use
of beds for Ukrainian refugees, insisting that the total number of beds allocated is a small number of the national total.
Last weekend, Independent TD Danny Healy-Rae and his neighbour, Michael Collins of West Cork, issued a statement calling for a cap on the numbers of Ukrainians because of the lack of housing and and other services in the South-West.
The Government had not considered the impact “on one of the most crucial fundamentals of our economy, namely the tourism sector and the tens of thousands of jobs that depend on it,” the TDs said.
“Buying up vast swathes of hotel capacity is already yielding profoundly negative economic impacts,” the pair said, voicing concerns among the tourist industry.
The council in Kerry has also conceded it is coming under pressure for homeless services because some emergency accommodation has been diverted to accommodating refugees from Ukraine, it has said.
Some 91 adults and 14 children are now homeless in Kerry and there is a waiting list of 2,000 qualified applicants on the Kerry housing list.
HOWEVER, not everyone is under stress. For proprietors of three and two-star hotels and guesthouses, housing refugees is attractive as it offers good rates and year-round business.
Some €47.3m has been paid to private operators who have invoiced to the end of May for emergency hotel accommodation for those fleeing Ukraine, according to an overall figure from the Department of Children. That is for around a two-month period.
On June 19, an estimated 38,700 persons from Ukraine have been issued with personal public service numbers (PPSNs) issued to individuals from Ukraine under the temporary protection directive, according to the CSO.
The Department of Children has refused to disclose the individual rates being paid, or numbers of premises involved, saying that information is commercially sensitive.
“The department cannot disclose contractual information in relation to specific areas,” a spokesman said.
The most recent available figures show that, as of May 25, the total invoiced expenditure on accommodation was approximately €47.3m, which includes board, according to the department.
There is no standard rate and the International Protection Accommodation Service, the agency which is in charge of providing accommodation, negotiates individual deals with properties.
The rates depend on location, as well as factors such as standards and the price that could be commanded as a tourist facility, according to sources. The initial contracts were for three months but these have in recent days been renewed for six months, according to one proprietor who was being offered three-month contracts initially.
“This makes it very attractive for us as in October, November, and December we would have no one,” one proprietor on the Ring of Kerry said of the new additional six-month contract that he has been offered.
But while proprietors signing up for lucrative deals with the International Protection Accommodation Service are happy, there is growing disquiet in local communities about placing refugees in isolated areas without transport or access to shops.
There is also a lack of communication with local communities — communication with the International Protection Accommodation Service has been challenging, according to Mr Spillane.
Questions have repeatedly been asked about the logic of sending refugees to rural areas or places with poor public transport connections.
The plight of the refugees was raised at the local community council meeting last Thursday night and a collection for toys and clothes has begun.
The Killarney Immigrant Support Agency and the council has also
been asked to assist the community in Faha.
Arriving on St Patrick’s Day, when “everything was green”, is how Anna Malomolkina describes her first glimpse of the region associated with Daniel O’Connell, the Liberator.
Anna, one of 220 residents of the Skellig Star in Caherciveen, will not be going back to Ukraine.
“There is nothing to go back to. No car, no house, nothing,” she said of her home in Mariupol. But she won’t be staying in Caherciveen either. She longs for city life.
She is one of the few arrivals with good English, and like her mother Irene, the family lived in Johannesburg in South Africa for many years, returning to settle in Mariupol three years ago.
“I always lived in a big city. For me it’s a shock. No public transport. It’s too far from everything,” Anna said of Caherciveen.
Killarney is about an hour away for work and even if she were able to buy a car, she can’t afford car insurance.
A hairstylist, she has always worked but there is nothing going in Caherciveen, except maybe a day here, a day there.
“I need to live professionally,” Anna says.
No fan of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Anna and her mother Irene felt he could have done more to avoid war with Russia.
He has “messed up her life”, her plans, and her family’s plans, she said bursting into tears.
Anna is one of the few new arrivals to speak good English. Most others I approach have at best one or two words.
Two women waiting to collect children from the Puffin pre-school manage to tell me their husbands are in the reserves in Kyiv. They have seen no fighting, yet tell me they are “very happy” in Caherciveen.
