43 asylum seekers paid £5,000 each to a `man who helped'

"It's cold here". That was the first impression of Ireland the latest group of asylum-seekers - some 43 Africans and eastern Europeans - had when they landed at Rosslare, Co Wexford, on St Patrick's Day.

The asylum-seekers, who each paid £5,000 sterling to "a man who helped", were smuggled from their home countries and put aboard the Irish Ferries' vessel LV Normandy, which sailed from Cherbourg in France.

On arrival on Friday they reported to gardai and were interviewed before being housed in B&B accommodation in Rosslare, Wexford town and surrounding areas. Many of the Africans, whose home countries include Nigeria, Congo, Togo, and Angola, are being housed in the Carne Holiday Centre, a centre owned by the St Vincent de Paul Society, at Carne Beach, near Rosslare.

If the sight of 10-ft bearded men dressed in green and large blow-up serpents did not deter them, the Irish weather - which most of us thought the warmest St Patrick's weekend in years - almost did. When The Irish Times arrived to speak to them at Carne yesterday, a group of Congolese women and children were enjoying the Co Wexford sunshine wrapped in heavy coats. With pidgin English, they said they had been treated fairly and conditions were "OK", but added that they had nothing to do. "It all depends on being allowed stay," one said.

The women pointed to a Nigerian men who they said spoke good English. The man, in his early 30s, agreed to speak but did not want to be named. He said the group had not travelled from the same regions and did not know one another before being placed on the ship.

The unofficial spokesman said he was a member of the Oodura Progressive Congress in Nigeria and that his life was under threat from the "undemocratic government". He also claimed that as a Christian he could be murdered by what he said were semi-official militia and that his tribal ethnic group, the Igaw, was in danger as the government wanted its homelands.

He said he had been working in a bank but decided to leave, helped "by a white man who I paid 700,000 Naira". There are 120 Naira to the pound. He said he did not know where he was going, "only to Europe", and insisted: "I just changed ship once somewhere between Nigeria and here. I know nothing about France."

Under the Dublin Convention, an international agreement between European states, asylum-seekers must seek asylum in the first European country in which they land.

In Wexford, The Irish Times located a number of people who indicated that they were Romanian. They declined to be interviewed. A spokesman for local gardai said the asylum-seekers were being well cared for, adding "they'll not go hungry".

The method of their arrival would appear to indicate that a fairly sophisticated "underground railway" exists which is able to funnel people into Ireland.