Four UCD graduates from Gaza share their struggle and fear of becoming homeless in Ireland after their scholarships come to an end.
Managing to escape a genocide and reaching a European country with a good scholarship sounds like the happy ending to a devastating novel; page turned, book closed. But reality is different from fiction, and the book continues with a new story, with its own hardships: not just navigating solitude and change in a foreign country – your family still under siege – but also having to race to find a new source of income once your scholarship drains out.
While the Irish government is under fire for refusing Visas to more than half of the Gazan students who’ve secured a scholarship this year, we turn back to those who came to Ireland in 2025, undertook their studies, saw their scholarship come to an end and had to find a whole new way of living in this country.
Shaker Al-Buhaisi
“I had no clue what I would do after my scholarship ended. When we exited Gaza, we all knew it was a one-way ticket: the Israeli soldiers told us. I don’t think they would allow us back for many years. We all had to find another option after the scholarship.
One was to look for jobs on a graduate VISA, a temporary permit for recently graduated students. In those given months, you need to find a qualifying job: it needs to be in your field, the salary must go beyond a certain threshold, and it often requires the company to sponsor you, which is difficult. The second option is to leave Ireland. The third is: apply for asylum, which most students did. But if you do it, you are locked here and can’t get out before your application is processed. You can’t launch an asylum procedure in any other EU country, even if you get a job offer elsewhere. In terms of asylum, it’s either Ireland or nothing.
I’ve got my asylum approved in as short as 4 months, while other Gazan students are still waiting. I’m officially a permanent resident of Ireland and am just starting a PhD in Immunology at Trinity College with a TRDA scholarship. Still, I relied on a few grand in donations in the transition phase between one scholarship and the other. There are several students who didn’t find a job and are still applying and living out of savings.
This year at UCD was difficult. I arrived mid-September, right in the middle of term. And I found a gap between the education here and the one I got in my country. Not only did we have two years with no education because of the war. My field in undergrad was “wet lab”: I was dealing with lab and equipment. But this equipment wasn’t available in Gaza because the Israelis wouldn’t allow it in; however, we were expected to be trained with it. I had to learn it here in Ireland, working full-time in the lab while being a full-time student”.
Fatima (fake name)
“I arrived in Ireland early in July 2025. We were among the first students to travel from Gaza to Dublin.
All international students must think about what to do after their studies if they want to stay in Ireland. Many look for a part-time job to support them and make their transition to the job market easier. But I wasn’t in the right mindset to deal with it. I was coming from a war zone. Here we were required to think about a tomorrow, but in Gaza, we wouldn’t have a tomorrow; changing this mindset needed time.
I didn’t even know where to find jobs and didn’t have a clear idea of what I wanted to study either – I was afraid of the language barrier, I was scared some modules would be too difficult and didn’t pick them. Looking back, I would have had better goals and experience if I had a mentor to support me. I think the scholarship should have set up a mentoring programme from the moment we came here, with someone who understood the delicacy of our situation.
Regardless, I feel grateful. UCD is a great institution; there are lots of facilities and opportunities. Even in my free time, I go to UCD to study, and I loved to be part of a Master’s here. Now I’ve got an internship, and I’m doing my best before I land a job: I know I have a task to do, and that’s all I think about.
I haven’t applied for international protection because surrendering my passport would mean that there’s no going back home for a long time. Some of my relatives live abroad; I’m lucky because I still have a family somewhere in this world. When it comes to Gaza, I don’t know if I want to go back, because it’s not the Gaza I know anymore”.
Ameera
“I’ve been in Ireland for one year. The first months, I was ignoring the idea that the scholarship would end one day because there were so many things I needed to get used to. But then, the second semester, I started to get very overwhelmed about the thought: what should I do? My stipend will finish, and my accommodation too. It was at the same time that I was doing my exams and writing my dissertation.
When we were close to the date in May and June, it got very difficult because houses were very expensive and I couldn’t afford them. I got help from a family who allowed me to stay in their house for 400€ per month, but they were very concerned about me not being able to find a job later, and I had to leave. Then an Irish lady offered me to stay with her at a very small price until I found a job. It was a big relief that I would have a house and not be homeless.
I applied for asylum as a backup for myself. But then I discovered I couldn’t apply for any job because companies were asking for at least a graduate Visa, and as an asylum seeker, I can’t access that. Eventually, I got a job as a research assistant, but things are still not clear because I’m working on a student Visa. If I don’t have the asylum response before the end of September, I don’t think I will be able to continue working there.
I had a lot of support from UCD Global; they did a great job, and especially some people and friends were very supportive. But if I don’t get a refugee decision, I don’t have a backup option. I will need to leave Ireland, and I won’t know what to do”.
These testimonies show that the relevant Irish institutions put very little planning into supporting these young Palestinian students in the aftermath of their graduation — that is, during the delicate transition phase when they would have no source of income, no housing, and few prospects in a foreign country, with no possibility of safely returning to their own. Ireland’s disastrous asylum system, now 26 years old — under which those applying for refugee status are banned from working for months while awaiting a decision — contributes to an absurd impasse: top-level graduates, educated in Ireland, are forced to gamble between the risk of ending up in overcrowded direct provision (DP) centres, the risk of becoming homeless, or leaving the country altogether. This appears fully in line with the Irish government’s recent position of refusing entry to Gazan students because they cannot provide proof that they plan to leave Ireland after the end of their studies.
Sara Corona – Features Editor