Homes for Ukraine: Almost 600 refugee visas granted for NI

Almost 600 visas have been granted to Ukrainian refugees hoping to come to Northern Ireland.

About 400 are thought to have already made the journey from their war-torn country to their new home here.

Most refugees flew into Dublin and then travelled across the border to Northern Ireland.

The visas are under the UK Home Office's Homes for Ukraine scheme, and are sponsored by Northern Ireland residents.

It is now more than two months since Russia invaded Ukraine.

Belfast has the highest number of visa sponsors (95), followed by Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon, and Newry, Mourne and Down, which each had 90 applicants to date.

Help centres have been set up in Belfast, Newry, Craigavon and Ballymena.

A spokesperson for the Executive Office at Stormont said: "Over the past two weeks we have helped around 240 Ukrainian people at the assistance centres.

"The available figures for the Homes for Ukraine Scheme show that 598 visas have been issued to applicants being sponsored by Northern Ireland residents (as of 26 April)."

The number of visas issued to applicants being sponsored by residents in Northern Ireland, broken down by council area, are:

There have been complaints about the length of time the UK visa application process takes, and reports some refugees have given up trying to leave Ukraine due to the delays.

By Claire Graham, BBC News NI

A Ukrainian family being sponsored by hosts in County Fermanagh is "running out of money" while waiting for visas, according to the man hoping to bring them to Northern Ireland.

Their sponsor Barry Mylam said it had been nearly six weeks since they started the process together under the Homes for Ukraine Scheme.

Although the family of five have been granted visas, the children aged two and six still haven't received the necessary papers because of their type of passport.

The family has decided to cross back into war-torn Ukraine and travel to a passport office in Kiev to collect new biometric passports for the children and restart the application process.

"That's two days driving into a war-zone, gong to the passport office and two days driving back again," said Mr Mylam.

"It's terrible that our government is putting their lives at risk for the sake of a bit of paper.

"They did the sensible thing, they left with enough money to support themselves for a few weeks.

"But they're getting to the stage now where our delays have been so long that they are running out of money.

"Their intent is to drive here in their car but they can only hold on so much longer paying for accommodation before that's going to be a problem for them.

The Home Office said: "In response to Putin's barbaric invasion we have launched one of the fastest and biggest visa schemes in UK history.

"All applications from families are normally processed together, but cases differ in complexity and it is vital that robust safeguarding processes are in place to protect children from trafficking and other risks."

Ian Snowden, head of the Ukrainian support team in Northern Ireland, said he expected the system to speed up.

"Over 1,000 Ukrainian people have applied to come here through the Homes for Ukraine sponsor scheme, and that's on top of the family connections scheme," he said.

"The Home Office is really speeding up the pace at which they're approving those visa applications.

"I think over the course of May we'll start to see a lot more people coming in.

"And of course more applications will be made as well."