Wife in plea for return of deported husband

An Irishwoman whose Romanian husband was deported last week has made a personal appeal to the Minister for Justice, Mr McDowell, to allow them to be reunited.

Ms Frances Moran said that, by separating the couple, the Government was effectively telling her who she could and could not marry.

Mr Florin Cavaler (30) came to this State in 1997 and met Dubliner Ms Moran (40) in 2001. However, he was deported shortly afterwards because his asylum application had failed.

She said he made the application on the basis that he could not return to Romania because he was gay and would be persecuted. This was not true but he was told he would have a better chance of staying in Ireland if he said that, she said.

The couple kept in touch and she converted to the Romanian Orthodox Church before they married in Romania in 2002.

They returned to Ireland but he was deported for the second time last Thursday.

Ms Moran said she was "absolutely devastated" by the deportation. She pointed out that the Irish Embassy in Bucharest had processed their documents before they married so the marriage must have been acceptable to the Irish authorities.

"So why won't they let us stay together now?" she said. Ms Moran said she could not go to live in Romania because it was a very deprived country and neither she nor her husband would have an income there.

She said she was surviving on a €134 weekly social welfare payment here and could not afford to travel to Romania.

She could not read or write, and the telephone calls to Romania were expensive so the Government was denying her contact with her husband.

"What am I left with?" she said. "Am I married to a photograph of him? It's very unfair what the Minister for Justice is doing to a married couple. I want to see the Minister for Justice and plead with him and ask him why is he doing this to us," Ms Moran said.

She said she could not afford to take on a solicitor to fight her case, and her husband was refused legal aid to fight the deportation on the grounds that his case would probably fail.

A spokeswoman for Mr McDowell said she could not comment on individual cases. However, if Ms Moran wished to write to the Minister for Justice to make her case, the Minister would consider the correspondence, she said.

Residents Against Racism has criticised the deportation. "I think it's dreadful that they should split up a couple like that," said a spokeswoman, Ms Rosanna Flynn.

She said the group would be examining the case in detail to see what action they could take.

Mr Cavaler was one of 53 Romanians and 12 Moldovans who were escorted from the State in the biggest single deportation yet last Thursday.