In July this year, two years after she and her husband arrived in Ireland having fled the Russian invasion of her home city of Kherson, Liudmyla Shevchenko was evicted from her State-provided accommodation in Freshford in Co Kilkenny.
She had just returned from a trip to a health centre outside Lviv in western Ukraine with her husband Anatoyli. It’s a journey they had made the year before without any problems.
However in the intervening months, the policy on leaving State-provided accommodation had changed.
The Department of Integration deemed their absence as unsanctioned.
Ms Shevchenko was given 24 hours to leave their accommodation and her husband, who was still receiving treatment in Ukraine, would not be permitted to return to it.
“I got a shock, it was so hard for me to understand,” Ms Shevchenko said via an interpreter.
“Anatoyli is 72 years of age and unfortunately he is not a healthy man,” Ms Shevchenko said, adding: “He had a stroke in 2024 and he was in Kilkenny hospital.”
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“Liudmyla tried to appeal the decision about this situation with her accommodation and also she provided all her documents about Anatoyli’s health and about all the treatment that he needed to have, but unfortunately nothing worked,” the interpreter, Helen Ivochkina, explained.
Ms Shevchenko learned of this news while her husband was still undergoing treatment in Ukraine and her search for new accommodation began.
Initially an Irish family took Ms Shevchenko in for a few weeks, and then she found what she called her “miracle”.
It is a small flat in Freshford that she shares with another Ukrainian woman, each with a single bedroom.
However, it is bittersweet, as she said that the space is too small for her husband to join them and so now they speak only on the phone.
Her husband has since returned to their home in Kherson, she explained.
The southern city is no longer occupied by Russian forces, but remains on the frontline in the ongoing conflict.
“It is so hard for her to be here and know Anatoyli is in Ukraine and also Liudmyla wanted to go back to Ukraine, but Anatoyli said no, it is so dangerous right now, so be in Ireland and I will be in Ukraine,” Ms Ivochkina explained.
Up to October last year a “short-term absence allowance” allowed Ukrainians living in State-provided accommodation, such as in hotels or guesthouses, to leave for up to seven days in a six-month period.
This has since been updated and now people can only leave for one night or more in “exceptional circumstances” and this must be approved by the Department of Integration’s Ukraine Crisis Temporary Accommodation Team.
A person can retroactively apply, and a spokesperson for the Department of Integration said permissions are granted on “a case by case” basis.
Unapproved absences are “considered a refusal of emergency accommodation”, the spokesperson said.
National Coordinator for the Ukraine Civil Society Forum Emma Lane-Spollen described “the bar for getting permission” to leave accommodation as “extremely high” and said that a “zero-tolerance policy” was being applied that lacked “compassion”.