Only a sleep-deprived parent of small children would understand this but some time ago Breda O'Brien was secretly thrilled when the doctor decided it would be wiser if she stayed overnight in hospital after a minor surgical procedure.
Twelve hours sleep, and maybe even an opportunity to read beckoned, and undergoing a general anaesthetic seemed a very fair exchange.
The next morning, I was sitting up in bed, thoroughly rested and very pleased with myself, when a Russian woman came to clean the room.
I could not resist jabbering on to her about the wonders of a night's sleep when your children are five miles away, until I noticed she had gone very quiet.
In her excellent English, she said carefully that while she understood that I might regard it as a treat, she would willingly trade disturbed sleep for the opportunity to be with her children every day.
She had not seen them in months, nor would she see them for months to come. They were being cared for by her husband and his mother at home in Russia.
This qualified secretary, fluent in three languages, had taken a contract to clean in Ireland because it meant that she could send home to her family the money they needed to survive in a dire economic situation.
She explained that she was in hostel accommodation provided by her employer, and that she could not afford to rent a place for a family.
More importantly, even if her husband was able to secure a permit to join her, under current Irish regulations he would not be allowed to work, and the money that she was now sending home would be spent on keeping him and her family with her.
My glee at being temporarily child-free disappeared faster than the germs and dust which she was efficiently despatching from the room. The parallels were obvious and depressing; all those lonely Irish emigrants, supporting families and longing for home in years gone by.
I was also reminded of the South African women who cleaned house and minded children for the wealthy white people, while their own children were forced to suffer neglect. How callous have we become, that we accept the right to benefit from the labour of people like her, without caring how it disrupts families or distresses children?
Once this Russian woman and her predicament came to my attention, I began to see people like her everywhere. Familiar with the plight of asylum-seekers and refugees, I had not realised that so many other immigrants to Ireland are in difficult and precarious situations.
Some do not fit our stereotypical image of the migrant worker. So much have things changed, that we now have Americans as migrant workers in Ireland, not just in the familiar high-skills jobs but in low-paid employment.
I met one in a situation where, despite paying tax and PRSI, neither he nor his employer had realised that he needed to register with the Garda National Immigration Bureau. As a result, he is now an undocumented worker, and like so many Irish in the past, afraid to go home in case he can never return.
It is still a shock to us that immigration has become a fact of Irish life, and does not look set to significantly decrease even given a contraction in the economy.
The extent to which we now depend on migrant labour, and how shabbily we often treat migrant workers, is set out in a report from the Immigrant Council of Ireland (ICI) published last week, Labour Migration into Ireland.
For example, ICI points out that immigration has reached peaks of 47,000 in recent years.
This is a very high figure, given that the US which has traditionally relied on migration, accepts an annual intake of approximately 700,000 legal immigrants. The figure of 47,000 in Ireland would be the equivalent of the US accepting three million legal immigrants annually.
Nor is immigration an urban phenomenon. For various reasons, figures for legal immigrants may well be underestimated, but using official figures, even Leitrim, with a population of 26,000, had 191 non-EU migrant workers in 2002.
Of course, in 2002, just under 40 per cent of immigrants were Irish people returning from emigration themselves. However, the figures of Irish people returning will fall in the future, simply because so many have already come home, and fewer are leaving in the first place.
One would think that our history of emigration would make us kind to those who come to live with us either temporarily or in a more long-term way; sadly, the ICI report is replete with examples showing that little of such fellow-feeling exists. Take the case of Sergei, a Latvian living and working in Ireland as a shop manager for the past three years.
Two months ago, Sergei discovered that his Irish colleagues are paid €9.75 an hour while he is paid the minimum wage. Despite working more than 50 hours a week, he has never received overtime, and he was told all holidays in Ireland are unpaid, so he has never been able to afford to take one.
When Sergei confronted his employer, he was sacked. Given that work permits are given to the employer and not the employee, Sergei is now in an invidious position.
The ICI makes many recommendations that would go some way to securing justice for migrant workers.
Among them is a recommendation that migrant workers should have rights equivalent to those enjoyed by host-country workers, and that recruitment agencies should be regulated in order to stamp out abuses.
It also suggests that family reunification should be a legal right, and that spouses and partners should have the right to work.
Other countries offer family reunification more readily.
As a result, to give just one example, we are losing many of the Filipina nurses we were once so desperate to woo. They are going to places where some value is placed on family.
As usual, it will take something like the loss of vital workers to make us realise the injustices endemic in our system. Until then, we will continue to fail to see what these often ambitious and hard-working people can contribute to our society.
And we will continue to treat their rights to justice, and to a family life, with callous disregard.