Elena and Vasile Gherase point proudly to the new church at the end of their quiet culde-sac. The middle-aged couple from Glodeni Vale, north of Bucharest, are religious in a still fairly religious country.

But Romania is also a poor place. It was quite a struggle for the community to gather the money to pay for the building: this is a country where those lucky enough to have a job earn about $100 a month.

Last August a new child joined the 500-strong congregation of the church. Four-yearold Mihaela Florica Porumbaru, who was being fostered by the Vasile family after being abandoned as a child, caused quite a stir in the small village.

Paralysed from the waist down, she had to be carried everywhere, and when the Gherases bought her a wheelchair she was often seen racing Ms Gherase's grand-daughter, Andra, who was on her bicycle.

Last Monday Andra was allowed to stay up late because Mihaela was due home from a six-week holiday in Ireland. However, she never arrived.

She was at the centre of a media and political frenzy in Ireland which eventually led to her not catching the flight at Belfast International Airport.

Briege Hughes, her carer in Ireland, who has been incorrectly described as her Irish foster mother, outlined a horrific future for the four-year-old. She was being forced to return to a squalid, decrepit orphanage where the children were starved, Mrs Hughes said.

It was also reported that there might not be a place available at the orphanage and she would instead be put in an adult psychiatric institution. Mrs Hughes, who had arranged medical appointments for the four-year-old to see if she could be helped to walk again, won support and sympathy for her plight.

It was a clear-cut situation: if the child went back to Romania, her health would suffer. "If Mihaela goes back to Romania, she will die. I can't let that happen", Mrs Hughes told the Mirror newspaper.

However, the situation in Romania is rather different from the impression created.

Elena Gherase decided to become a foster mother after her two grown-up daughters left home. "I was not working and I love children, so I approached the local Child Protection Commission to be a foster parent," she said.

Her family were vetted before they were given children, and inspectors visit the house twice each month.

Ivan Ivanoff, the president of Dambovita Child Protection Commission, supervises the protection process and is Mihaela's legal guardian. He is an unlikely reader of Irish tabloid newspapers. On his desk lie copies of his favourite sayings from Mark Twain and Fenelon, the 18th-century French philosopher.

But recently Mr Ivanoff has been scouring with increasing disbelief the coverage of Mihaela's case in some Irish newspapers. He said that most of what had been written was not true and Mihaela's year with the Gherases had been happy and good for her development.

He said: "The child arrived in Ireland in a very good condition because she has stayed for one year at a foster family which is very like a normal family. She has been taken care like in a normal family.

"The child is smart. She has started learning English, but unfortunately she arrived to us only after that so-called natural mother did what she did to the child, throwing her away in a shoe box, which caused her dreadful injuries."

Mr Ivanoff said he was amazed that no reporters from Ireland had called to check the story. With a strained smile he pointed to a large Mark Twain quotation which he has had on his desk for over a year: "How easy it is to make people believe a lie and how difficult it is to get it out of their heads."

He comments: "At this moment, that quote is very true."

Mihaela was the victim of Irish memories not keeping up with a changing reality in Romania. In the early 1990s volunteers collected millions and travelled in their thousands to help institutionalised children in Romania.

"What you need to understand is the difference between the situation in 1990, which was really dreadful at that time, and the progress that has been made until today, but unfortunately public opinion abroad stays [the same] even nowadays as the image presented in the early 1990s, when the situation was really dramatic."

Without doubt there are still horror stories to be found in Romanian orphanages. But gradually the situation is changing. One of the biggest engines for change has been the country's obsession with joining the EU.

Baroness Emma Nicholson, the EU rapporteur for Romania, has been one of the international community's fiercest critics of the country's treatment of children, but she says excellent progress has been made recently.

"The President and Prime Minister told me this would be a key part of their government programme. The Prime Minister has set in hand a root-andbranch reform of massive proportions to bring childcare programmes fully in line with EU standards", she said at a childcare conference in Bucharest yesterday.

Baroness Nicholson condemned the treatment of Mihaela. "One [newspaper] article described her condition [in Romania] as little better than a pig. This is appalling", she said.

Along with reforming institutions, the authorities also began a fostering programme in 1997. There are now 7,000 foster parents across the country. Each child receives $18 a month and the family between $73 and $86, depending on the special needs of the child.

Elena and Vasile Gherase received $86 a month for looking after Mihaela. They live in a large detached house which sits on a 1,100 sq metre site.

Mrs Gherase wears an apron a lot of the time and had probably never read a French philosopher or an Irish newspaper. She has almost more questions than the reporters who are now starting to come to her house.

She wants to know what kind of country Ireland is and if Mihaela will be safe there. The child's teddy bears and dolls are placed on top of a cupboard for safe keeping, and she is busy looking after a mentally handicapped boy who has been placed with her while Mihaela is on holiday.

Last Monday Ireland congratulated itself that, despite the recent Celtic Tiger consumerism, there were still people like Briege Hughes around. She is the traditional Irish mother with a heart of gold who is willing to fight and make sacrifices for her children and those close to her.

Yesterday Silviu Calciu, the head of Romania's National Authority for Child Protection, had a different view.

"I am very sorry that a situation that started from the special needs of one child has been so dramatically, incorrectly and unfairly exploited through the media in order to enable an inter-country adoption which would be illegal", he said.

Now, five days after the controversy first erupted, Ireland's self-congratulation seems premature and misplaced.