Sick and pregnant Ukrainian refugees in North and West Clare have been forced to miss medical appointments in recent weeks because of a lack of transport, since the Government cut their travel passes this September.
According to Eoin Tynan-O’Mahony, Chair of the Clare Immigrant Support Centre, the cut of the travel pass to sick Ukrainian refugees is having a negative impact on some of the most vulnerable people in Clare today.
Indeed, he says that one Ukrainian cancer patient had to be accompanied by her social welfare officer for treatment, because she had no other way of making the appointment.
“Most of the Ukrainians will work if they can and if they earn more than €125 a week they lose any payment. They recognise that they should be able to support themselves if they can,” said Eoin.
“But the groups who are badly affected by this are older people and single mothers, and there are a lot of them. There is particular hardship for people in these groups when they have to attend hospital, either for some ongoing medical treatment or other appointment.
“Their finances just can’t support that. They have no money for transport. This has always been as issue for people seeking international protection.
“We would try to give people lifts to hospital appointments when we can. A couple of weeks ago we were not able to do this, and one client ended up being brought to hospital by their social welfare worker who stayed in hospital waiting for them and then brought them back, effectively spending the whole day doing this.”
Mr Tynan-O’Mahony says that pregnant Ukrainian women can find it very difficult to get to hospital appointments.
“We have a similar situation with women who are pregnant and need to go to hospital for their checkups.
“Under the new arrangement, they are not in a position to travel to the hospital themselves,” he said.
“The real difficulty is when we have older people who have a long-term illness and need to visit the hospital on a regular basis. Typically, these people are based in North Clare or West Clare, and have to travel to Limerick for an appointment.
“It is difficult for anyone based in North and West Clare to travel to Limerick for regular medical appointments, with the A&E closing and a lot of the services moving to Limerick.
“We have situations where people are missing important medical appointments because they simply can’t travel to them. That has happened on a number of instances.
“Often times they can find some way of making it to the hospital or they postpone the treatment, but there have been one or two instance where people have missed appointments.”
Mr Tynan-O’Mahony is calling on the Government to reconsider its decision to remove the travel pass from sick, pregnant or elderly Ukrainians.
“These people are the most vulnerable of the vulnerable. But at the same time, we do need to be sensitive of the situation that many Irish people find themselves in as well. We have many Irish people who are on social welfare and have an illness and they can’t get a lift to an appointment. The difference is that we have a network of friends and family here in Ireland that the Ukrainian community just don’t have,” he said.
“I think it would be of huge benefit to these people to have this travel pass reinstated.
“There are ground in society who need extra support and these would be one of those groups. These are exceptional circumstances.
“The trauma that these people have been through. Many have had their homes destroyed. Some have tried to go back to Ukraine only to discover that there is nothing left there for them. Their lives are utterly changed.”
Andrew Hamilton is a journalist, investigative reporter and blogger who has been working in the media in Ireland for the past 20 years. His areas of special interest include the environment, mental health and politics.