The plight and fate of 100 or so Roma people from Romania has caught the public imagination and become a major talking point over the last week after their atrocious living conditions on the M50 roundabout were widely aired in the media.
They are caught in a legal limbo directly attributable to the accession agreements reached by the Government with Romania and Bulgaria last October, which strictly curtailed their rights. No longer able to seek asylum after that accession, neither are they entitled to emergency welfare payments while their situation is sorted out. There is suddenly a great fear that unless they voluntarily return home or are deported a precedent would be set for many more Roma to come here.
Such fears are stoked by divisions among the estimated 30,000 Romanian community already resident, most of whom arrived before this year and are not of Roma background. These have found employment and are making their way in trying circumstances, with no desire to offend or inflame Irish sensibilities. They resent the Roma newcomers, whom they believe are trying to test the host society's firmness of legal and human resolve by false stories about their even worse plight in Romania itself. Thus the prejudices and arguments Roma say they are trying to escape from at home are reproduced in Ireland. They echo similar attitudes towards Travellers here.
All this puts sympathetic Irish observers, officials and activists in a difficult position, torn between a desire to alleviate the awful living conditions for families on the M50 roundabout and a worry that their humanitarian impulse will be cynically manipulated. In truth we know too little about the precise facts of this case. Even if living conditions for the Roma families are as bad as they say, this does not give them an unrestricted right to come to Ireland.
The stipulations laid down last October - that they are entitled to stay for longer than three months only if they are employed or self-employed or students, or have sufficient funds and sickness benefits to support themselves - are legally in place, however much their terms are disputed in terms of severity and duration. The deportation orders now served invite those affected to say why they should not be implemented next week - and already many have agreed to return home voluntarily. A case taken by one family will allow these conditions to be judicially reviewed.
Such a legal process is required to regulate migration and immigration to this State. Ireland has experienced a huge influx of about 400,000 people in recent years, bringing the number of foreign born to one in eight of the working population, making this all the more necessary and legitimate. But that does not absolve us from the obligation rooted in universal human rights to ensure people going through such a process are treated sensitively, humanely and fairly.