Important, I think, to put this figure in some context, so people can understand how large it is:
Michael McGrath tells National Economic Dialogue that €3bn is to be set aside in next year's Budget for humanitarian and refugee costs arising from Ukraine
— Gavan Reilly (@gavreilly) June 20, 2022
The total national budget for this year – everything included – is €97billion. So, assuming it stays roughly the same for next year, the Irish Government is going to spend just over 3% of total spending on supporting Ukrainian refugees.
Compare that, for a moment, to the vaunted (and rightly praised) UK military aid to Ukraine. Boris Johnson’s Government has pledged and delivered about £1.5bn in armaments to the Ukrainian Government since the war began. The UK, of course, is also taking refugees, but many fewer per capita than Ireland. In terms of total outlay on this war and its consequences, Ireland is comfortably outspending – at least as a percentage of its budget – its larger, and widely praised neighbour. There are those, still, who insist that Ireland is not doing enough for Ukraine. They should, perhaps, consider that fact.
There is an important difference, too, though: What the UK Government is doing is, undoubtedly, financially sustainable. They have a total national budget more than ten times that of Ireland, and they’re spending well under 1% of it to help the Ukrainians. What’s more, their spending is not putting any strain on domestic infrastructure: The money is going into arms, which flows into Ukraine itself.
In Ireland, the difference is that our spending is also, unavoidably, putting strain on sectors of the economy: Consider all the hotel rooms being paid for to host Ukrainian refugees. Those hotel rooms are not, then, free for tourists. So we’re spending taxpayer money to reduce the incomes of some taxpayers, who rely on the tourist sector for their income. Not the hotelliers, by the way – they’re delighted. But the restaurants, and the shops, and all the other people who benefit from the “seasonal” economy.
What’s more, 3% of our budget is not an insignificant amount by itself. There is a real, and substantial opportunity cost to that money. We’re spending it on Ukrainian refugees, and not on housing, or health, or (perish the thought) tax cuts or childcare or education. It is not yet clear where the money is coming from, either: Is it being borrowed? Because then, we’re paying interest on it, too. Or is it being taken from other budgets? The most logical budget to take it from would be foreign aid, because it effectively is foreign aid, but there’d be war if that was suggested.
All of these questions are, I think, pretty reasonable. 3% of the budget is an astonishing amount of money – and Government is not known for over-estimating the cost of things. Nobody would be surprised if the real figure ended up at 4 billion, would they?
What’s truly astonishing though, is this: There is indeed a moral case to be made that Ireland is doing, and has done, the right thing. But it should be clear and obvious by now that we’re at the very limits of our ability to do the right thing. No other country in Europe, it’s fair to say, will spend a proportion of its budget this big on Ukrainian refugees. Its just objective fact that, like the Poles, we’ve taken more than our fair share.
And yet, there is no move to limit the numbers who may still come. No protest at the EU that the burden and the responsibility must be shared more equitably. There comes a point, after all – and even a liberal must acknowledge this – where you’ve stopped doing your duty, and have begun to allow others to shirk their duty. You might expect the Irish Government to be very vocal, internationally, about the amount they are spending, and to call on others to match them. No sign of it.
In the meantime, refugees who should, really, be being housed in Denmark or Italy or Portugal continue to flow here, condemned to months on end in some Comfort Inn built conveniently near a roundabout.
It’s the classic Irish Government move: No limits to what they’ll spend; No trigger that will ever provoke a complaint to the EU; No real plan beyond “do more of what we’re doing”. And there’s an endless budget for this, but a predictable trend towards vicious meanness when it comes to their own people, as Tracey McGinnis found out recently.
Ukrainian refugees are not the problem, and are not to blame for any of this. They neither asked to be made refugees, nor to end up living in a soulless hotel room not wondering where they are going next. They are in many ways the victims, too, of the Irish plan: Each additional refugee that arrives exhausts goodwill towards them and increases the risk of a backlash. Each additional refugee increases the demand and competition for refugee accommodation. It reduces the supports we can give them individually. Eventually, we’ll end up with thousands of poor, and miserable refugees who we can’t look after.
But then, that’s how it goes. The Irish Government measures its compassion by volume, not by good deeds, or good policy. We will all pay for this, in the medium term. And not just, I fear, financially.