Thousands of Romanians who have come to Ireland since their country joined the EU in January face a stark choice: work illegally in the black market, or go home. Carl O'Brienreports
It's 9pm on Sunday evening and there's standing room only at the Romanian Pentecostal church meeting on Parnell Square in Dublin. The congregation is overwhelmingly young - teenagers, young adults, mothers and fathers - and dressed mostly in dark, sombre clothes.
Every once in a while one of them passes a scrap of paper with a scribbled message up to the pulpit. Then, as the service draws to a close, the pastor looks through the notes and makes an announcement.
A plasterer, he says, arrived in Ireland last week looking for work and can be contacted via his mobile phone; a couple who work in catering have just arrived, looking for accommodation and any kind of employment available; here is the mobile number for a woman qualified as a nurse who is looking for part-time work; the next man is a builder, but is available for any kind of construction jobs.
IN RECENT WEEKS the church's community announcements, once reserved for details of prayer meetings and local events, have grown into a kind of classified-ads-of-last-resort for newly arrived Romanians. "There are a lot of desperate people looking for work," says Calin Onitu, a 27-year-old catering worker who has been based in Ireland for five years. "Some of them have been here two months now and are running out of money. Not everyone wants to take the step of having their phone number read out in the church."
These job hunters are just a handful of the thousands of Romanians who have arrived into Ireland since their country joined the European Union this year. In January alone, some 3,164 Romanian nationals, or more than 250 a day, were allocated Personal Public Service (PPS) numbers, almost four times the total allocated to the country for all of last year.
In many ways this surge of immigration resembles the influx of workers from Poland and other former accession states which joined the EU in May 2004. Except for one big difference. Fearful of an unmanageable tide of immigration, the Government chose to impose work restrictions against citizens from the EU's two newest member states, Romania and Bulgaria. This means Romanians must hold a valid work permit in order to be employed here, unless they are self-employed. However, just over 20 work permits were issued to Romanian nationals last January. Many might not know it yet, but they will be faced with a stark choice: work illegally here, or go home.
Marius, a 31-year-old builder and carpenter from Bucharest, arrived into Dublin during the second week of January.
"I was in the central square of the capital on New Year's Eve, celebrating Romania joining the EU," recalls Marius, a member of the Roma community who was living in a one-bedroom apartment with his wife and nine-month-old daughter. "We felt excited about the future." Now his optimism feels misplaced. Marius, who says he didn't know about the work restrictions here, has spent the last month dropping CVs to building sites around town.
"It's hard. People take your CV but they do not contact you. There is no explanation," he says. "I only learned about the restrictions after arriving here. No one told us. When we joined the EU, we thought all these restrictions were over."
With the help of the Roma Support Group, he's planning to set up as a self-employed labourer to get around the labour restrictions, and is a little more upbeat about his prospects. But, he says, he needs money quickly to send back to his wife and child at home. Patricia (42), also a member of the Roma community, is less optimistic. A trained cook, she says she earned an average of around €150 a month in Romania. With two grown-up daughters at home, she wants to earn money for a better standard of living.
Establishing herself as self-employed would be more difficult - but she is insistent that she doesn't want to work in the black market.
"I had big hopes when I came here, and now I'm willing to work at anything. Maybe the Government will ease the restrictions. I hope so. I don't want to go home, but maybe that will be the only choice."
Yet, while many say they will not work illegally here, it will become an inevitable option for many. The Migrant Rights Centre Ireland (MRCI), a support centre for immigrants, warned that this would happen if the Government imposed work restrictions.
"Wherever you put restrictions on workers at a time when there is demand for labour, recruiters and employers will find a way to circumvent these restrictions," says Siobhán O'Donoghue of the MRCI. "This leads to situations where people are told to register as self-employed when they are in fact working as employees and should be paid directly by the employer."
Illegal work inevitably undermines labour standards and places workers at a higher risk of being exploited.
"If people are serious about preventing exploitation, restrictions on our fellow EU workers should be lifted immediately."
THE MRCI WASN'T the only group warning that this would happen. The two main representative groups for the Romanian community in Ireland also launched a behind-the-scenes lobbying campaign last year to try to persuade the Government to keep its labour market open for the EU's newest citizens.
"Ireland is applauded for its work in campaigning against discrimination in so many areas," says Vasile Ros of the Romanian Community of Ireland. "Now it is discriminating against Romanians and denying its nationals their inherited rights as members of the EU."
On top of that, he's worried that confusion over the restrictions may impact on the estimated 6,000 Romanians who have been legitimately working here on permits. Under the complex set of new arrangements governing access to the labour market, any Romanian who has had a work permit for more than 12 months prior to January 2007 doesn't need one anymore. But many employers aren't aware of this.
THE GOVERNMENT HAS been taken by surprise by the numbers of Romanians arriving here. Its decision to impose the labour restrictions came after an unprecedented influx of people into the country since the 10 former accession states joined the EU in May 2004. After putting in place labour restrictions and talking tough about work permits, it didn't expect large volumes of Romanians to arrive here. Yet, Romanians now account for the second-largest foreign national grouping arriving here on a monthly basis.
The Minister for Enterprise and Employment, Micheal Martin, has expressed concern over the numbers arriving and says his department will work closely with the Revenue Commissioners to clamp down on bogus self-employment.In practice, however, there's not much the Government can do. EU citizens are free to travel here, while there is little if any policing done of people who claim they are self-employed until they file their tax returns. However, self-employed persons don't need to file returns until their second year of business, according to the Revenue Commissioners. Some sectors of the labour market - the building industry, in particular - are only too happy to sub-contract work to people claiming to be self-employed.
Meanwhile, the numbers coming here from Romania are continuing to swell. Calin Onitu's father-in-law Ioan Chimives (55) is one of the latest arrivals. He is here to help mind Calin's one-year-old daughter. An employee in a fabric company at home, he says he would like to work here if he was able to, but he acknowledges that his country's progress toward equal partnership in the EU will take time.
Calin, meanwhile, sees the problem of Romanians looking for work in a restricted labour market getting worse unless there is a sustained information campaign both in Romania and Ireland.
Romania lies at the bottom of the EU's wealth league with average wages of around €230 a month, although growth rates of between 6 and 7 per cent, partly fuelled by the accession process and EU funds, may improve living standards over the coming years. Many, however, aren't willing to wait that long.
"No one seems to know their rights," says Calin. "I think many arriving here think that when they get a PPS number, they are entitled to work here, which is not the case. There is a lot of confusion. In the meantime, people are getting more desperate for work and the black market will become more appealing."