More notes on #IrelandIsFull

Back in March, Ireland’s leaders said their nation could take in as many as 200,000 refugees from Ukraine. This was an extravagant promise compared with other much larger Western European countries. France is a country of 67 million people and took in just over 100,000. Spain has taken 130,000, into a population of around 48 million. Ireland has a population around 5 million.

Now, Ireland is closing in on welcoming about 58,000 refugees altogether and is facing an astonishing housing shortage, as we’ve documented here. The Irish state is currently renting out one-fourth of the nation’s hotel rooms to cope.

“We have to tell people who might come here from Ukraine or come here from other parts of the world seeking asylum that we have now reached the point where we can no longer guarantee accommodation for everyone who arrives here — and that’s the truth,” Tánaiste Leo Varadkar said this week. Some refugees may have to sleep on the street or in the Dublin airport.

The Ukrainian ambassador to Ireland has said the lack of accommodation for Ukrainian refugees coming to Ireland is “unacceptable.”

Many Irish people took umbrage at this statement, considering the strain they are under. But, of course, this is natural. Ireland’s leaders made a promise to Ukrainians fleeing war. A promise they could not keep. You can’t take umbrage at being called on it. It’s as if Ireland’s government thought it could collect points for virtue signaling, and now it finds itself drowning under its own commitments.