As the old song doesn’t quite have it, compassion for Ukrainians is a treasure when first it’s new. “But as love grows older, love grows colder/ And fades away like the morning dew.” The State loved our Ukrainians, but it has gone awfully cold on them. Enthusiasm has dribbled into ennui.

I remember listening to Morning Ireland in March 2022, a month after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Then-minister for agriculture Charlie McConalogue was talking about how Ireland was going to respond to the consequent refugee crisis. We would, he said, take in as many as 200,000 people.

At that point, my heart sank. This was, evidently, an Irish paroxysm of enthusiasm, an uncontrolled emission of bonhomie and affability – entirely sincere and entirely unreal. Everyone knew Ireland wasn’t going to take in 200,000 Ukrainian refugees for the simple reason that it couldn’t.

That’s the population of Limerick and Galway cities put together. Ireland had – and has – a huge housing crisis and almost every aspect of public provision, from healthcare to transport, is under massive strain.

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So if the Government was saying that it was going to take 200,000, you just knew that this was not a plan or a proposition. It was an expression of our self-infatuation with our image as the world’s most compassionate nation. The not-very-hidden subtext was: aren’t we a lovely people........

© The Irish Times