“L’Irlanda non è stata gentile con me” – Donna ucraina che torna a casa in un paese devastato dalla guerra dopo che il suo sogno irlandese è diventato un incubo

We must do more, we must allow this person any job they like and we must pay them the wage they would like. Otherwise they are threatening to go back to a war torn country that must be very bad if one is willing to go back. Sorry we as a nation are so selfish.

Rather go back to a town that is bombed by the Russians on a daily basis than stay in Ireland…

It’s not about selfishness on our part, or ingratitude on hers. It’s about having avenues there for people to better their situation, to set down roots, and to contribute to our society. Everybody wants that. We *should* have those avenues – we’ve being saying the same thing ourselves for years now about Direct Provision. I could easily see how someone who is looking at being locked into exclusionary hardship for years would say to themselves, ‘well, if I’m going to be suffering hardships, I may as well have my family around me’.

Being hardnosed about it, and honest, our system is set up to be difficult and unwelcoming. While we treated Ukranians differently, they’re still within the same overall system. It’s not a good system as it rewards despertion more than anything else, and people with skills we could definitely use end up leaving. We should want to be the kind of country that people would aspire to being a part of.

I hope things work out for her, and she manages to build some kind of life for herself.

> While in refugee accommodation in Ireland, Ms Musiienko was stalked by another refugee, she said.

> She said the staff she alerted to the threat told her it was nothing to do with them.

> Ms Musiienko also said there was an incident when she was instructed to turn on her laptop for inspection at a reception centre. Upon doing this, she said a male official copied photographs of her in a bikini taken when she was a teenager on holiday with her family.

> “I was only 16 or 17 years old in the photos,” she said.

> Another official rummaged through her suitcase, she claimed, and rifled through her underwear.

> On one occasion, Ms Musiienko said, she was told she would have to share a room with a man she did not know.

> She said she refused this and was given inferior accommodation to what was first promised.

> At that centre, she emerged from the shower one day to discover a man sitting on her bed who offered her alcohol.

> The man, who she said was around 40, began to stalk her when she refused to drink with him and would regularly bang on her bedroom door at night.

> In another centre, she said she was given a second-hand sleeping bag and told she would have to sleep on the floor with 20 other Ukrainians and international protection applicants.

> When she queried if there was better accommodation available, she said she was informed her other option was to sleep rough on the street.

> Ms Musiienko asked whether there were shower facilities she could use and was told she would have to knock on the bedroom door of other refugees and ask permission to use their bathroom.

Hardly surprising she felt unsafe. She _was_ unsafe.

We said come over to safety and then got bored being the host.

Should have gone to Longford, town of dreams

How can a country that prides ourselves of being welcoming and having our own history of experiencing displacement treat people in such an inhumane way?

And the people in these comments saying she should have been greatful is just shocking.