This week RTÉ News is carrying a series of reports across digital, radio and television looking at the situation in Ukraine two years after the Russian invasion.
Irina Tanchenko is from Kramatorsk, a Ukrainian held city in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine.
Around three weeks ago she arrived in Ireland with her ten year old daughter Polina to seek refuge here.
With the help of a Ukrainian Interpreter, Lana Falenda, Ms Tanchenko explained why she decided to flee her home.
“There is a war zone, just 15 kilometers from their home town and the Russian strikes even reached her house, her building,” Ms Falenda translates.
“It’s really dangerous, schools are closed, people lost jobs, all infrastructure and industry is closed, so they have to save their children, she took her daughter and (they) have come here to Ireland”.
When I ask why she chose this country, she told me that she came to join family already here.
For the last three weeks, the mother and daughter have been living at the Ballyogan Regional Temporary Rest Centre.
The converted warehouse, owned by Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council, has been welcoming new Ukrainian arrivals seeking refuge in Ireland since April 2022, just two months into the war.
Since then it has served as a stop over for thousands of new arrivals, before they were offered somewhere to stay, usually in serviced accommodation, like a hotel or guesthouse.
Ms Tanchenko and her daughter are among a group of some 60 recent arrivals who will likely be among the last to be processed through the centre in this way.
This is because there are plans to change the supports offered to new arrivals look set to come into force within weeks.
Once this happens, hotel rooms will no longer be offered to new arrivals, nor will any of the other serviced accommodation currently used to house displaced Ukrainians.
Instead a number of large scale accommodation centres will be converted from short stay centres to the only accommodation offering available to new arrivals, and even then, residents will only be permitted to stay for a maximum of 90 days.
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Ballyogan will be one of the first five such centres to come into operation.
The rest centre operating in Stradbally in Co Loais since mid-December has been confirmed as a second.
Three more sites have been located, and its believed one is in Co Limerick and another is in Co Kildare.
More may later be designated by the Minister for Integration, after the legislation underpinning the scheme in enacted.
When future new arrivals stay at one of these centres, they will receive fewer entitlements that those who came before them.
For example, instead of being able to claim standard social protection assistance, like the jobseekers allowance, residents in designated accommodation centres will get a less generous weekly allowance: €38.80 per adult and €29.80 per child for the duration of their stay, the exact same amount as is currently paid to asylum seekers in direct provision accommodation.
For the two weeks up to 14 February, weekly arrival figures dipped below 200.
Some see this as proof that the proposals are already having a deterrent effect.
When we asked Ms Tanchenko if she knew about the changes before she came, she explained, again via our interpreter that “she knows the system is changing and there will be new rules, but they come to Ireland not because they need free accommodation, they come to Ireland because it is really dangerous to be in Ukraine, and she cannot stay there.”
Oksana and Oleh, who are also among the recent arrivals at Ballyogan expressed similar sentiments.
“We come here not for money, not for free accommodation, we are learning English, we are searching for jobs, we want to be as Irish people, independent, we want to work, rent and be Independent here,” Oleh said.
Through our interpreter, he explained that he had served in the Ukrainian army and was in combat from the beginning of the war, flighting in “hotspots” including in Mykolaiv and Kharkiv, before he was seriously injured in Bakhmut.
After this, he said he was permitted to leave the army.
“They are looking for safety, to be in a peace and calm environment because its really hard to be (there), when the alarms are everyday, and they were separated for a long time, now they want to be reunited as a family and to build a peaceful life, to feel what it is to be in a peaceful country.”
