John O'Donoghue isn't the first to try to stem the ceaseless migration of gypsies by punishing those who transport them. In 1530, Henry VIII ruled that anyone caught conveying "Europe's most unwanted race" would be fined £40. The gypsies themselves were given the same treatment as some of the king's six wives, and were beheaded.
Today's gypsy immigrants won't face so severe a fate, but there is a dreary familiarity in the reaction to the latest wave of asylum-seekers to come to Ireland. Just as in every other country and century, gypsies are once more being portrayed as a threat - to our purses, to our daughters, to our Exchequer.
This morning's meeting between Mr O'Donoghue and representatives of road traffic hauliers has been billed by some as a crisis summit, called to ward off an epic invasion. In reality, the numbers involved are relatively small.
The Department of Justice won't specify how many asylum-seekers come from particular states but the total number of Romanians in Ireland is probably fewer than 1,500. A significant minority of these are not gypsies.
There is strong evidence that the movement of gypsies is seasonal, in part related to shortage of agricultural and other work in the rest of Europe. The "flood" of Czech and Slovak gypsies heralded by the British press last year abated almost as quickly as it began.
Here in Ireland, some politicians worked themselves into a lather about "Bosnians" before the last election, but when the Department later tried to re-register asylum-seekers, it found that many gypsies had already left.
In any case, the Minister would be better advised to look elsewhere for the reasons why so many Romanians are coming here so easily. A few truck-drivers can certainly play a role, wittingly or unwittingly, in bringing in asylum-seekers, but the real factor underlying current trends is the apparent collapse of inter-government co-operation on asylum-seekers.
It is almost a year since the Dublin Convention was introduced to provide uniformity within the EU in the treatment of asylum-seekers. The convention allows would-be asylum-seekers "one roll of the dice", in most cases in the first EU state in which they set foot. This was very convenient for Ireland, which has few direct transport connections with non-EU countries. Virtually everyone coming here has to pass through the UK, France or another EU state.
The Department clearly pinned its hopes for dealing with the upsurge in asylum applications on the new convention. It has even tried to apply the "first safe country" principle in the document to asylum-seekers who arrived here long before it came into force.
Unfortunately for Mr O'Donoghue, our neighbours have refused to co-operate.
Which is why, in the 11 months since the convention was applied, the total number of people deported back to other EU states under the terms of the convention is no more than "a handful", says a Department spokesman.
Over 5,000 asylum-seekers have arrived here since the Dublin Convention was enacted - a large majority by sea crossings - yet France, Britain and Germany have taken back no more than five people.
The French authorities must agree to take back an asylum-seeker before that person can be deported. They aren't quick to do this. A Rosslare immigration official might see an asylum-seeker alight from the Cherbourg boat but that, apparently, isn't proof enough for the French that the person has actually been in France.
It's the same throughout Europe. Governments talk about mutual co-operation - and then hope their immigration problem will quietly slip away, preferably across a border. And the Irish border just happens to be currently the most porous.
Meanwhile, the hapless pawns of the traffickers and the immigration officials - such as the children who spend four days in an airless container eating dog-food - are demonised wherever they go.
In Poland, the local papers claimed gypsy women weighted their skirts with wads of cash and their children were spreading meningitis and TB. In Ireland, the Wexford People tells us that Romanian men are trying to lure "impressionable" young girls into having a baby.
Throughout eastern Europe, Romany communities have been banished to the fringes of society, forced to live in squalor and subjected to frequent attacks from neighbours and the state. As the post-communist societies collapsed, gypsies provided the easiest scapegoats.
According to the US State Department's human rights report for 1997, the two-million-strong Romany population in Romania continues to be subject to "societal discrimination, harassment, beatings and violence".
The European Roma Rights Centre says Romany communities in Romania are the target of "systematically-conducted police raids". Although the situation has improved since gypsy villages were burned in 1994, the centre claims that "police brutality seems to have replaced the previous episodes of community violence".
In the Czech Republic there were 1,250 racially-motivated attacks on gypsies between 1991 and 1997, leaving nine dead.
Only the Department's officials can decide whether the latest batches of asylum-seekers to come here deserve refugee status. But, in the meantime, newspapers and the public should bear in mind the reasons why people flee their homelands. And the Government might purposefully reflect that it is time Ireland took its fair share of immigrants rather than the minimum it can get away with.