My understanding – and I might be open to correction, since the Irish Government has been lamentably opaque on this issue – is that accommodation costs for the Ukrainian refugees are being paid from the fund REACT-EU. If so, the Irish state is actually nicely in the black as regards accommodation costs, since these accommodation payments, obviously, are taxed.
A good friend of mine in Kilkenny is a businessman who owns a hostel. Last year, he was made an offer he could not refuse: €480k a year for two years to house 28 Ukrainians. As he says himself, nearly half of those payments will be given back in tax but he is more than happy to do so because he can make medium term plans on the back of guaranteed money.
Therefore, to my understanding, much of the narrative around Ukrainian refugees is completely skewed. I have raised this factor, quietly and politely, with several people in run of the mill conversations. To a person, they were surprised to learn about REACT-EU. They presumed the Irish state is paying these accommodation costs.
I do not know the story with any benefit payments to Ukrainian refugees: namely, whether those payments are covered by REACT-EU. Which or whether, the Irish government is playing into the hands of sundry far right lowlifes – Derek Blighe et al – by not making clear the nature of the situation regarding the REACT-EU fund.
Jozef Puska is a despicable and evil individual. I hope he never again sees the light of day. But it should be remembered that anyone talking in hostile fashion about him being in Ireland needs to have – simply by the imperatives of coherence and logic – an attendant argument. What argument? One about why and how Ireland should leave the EU.
Otherwise the hostility cancels itself. Anyone from an EU member state is perfectly entitled, unless exceptional circumstances apply, to be in Ireland.
A red flag about that evil individual? Regrettably not. The underage sex matter hardly counts significantly in this regard, despite the fact that he turned so evil. I would imagine – but obviously cannot know – an addiction to pornography proved the trigger for his heinous crime. There is such an element in life as tragedy, which is probably the single hardest factor to accept about life.