ONE hundred and fifty five letters have been sent by the Department of Justice to Cuban refugees, including some children, telling them that their applications for asylum have been refused.
They have been given 21 days to appeal the decision that they do not qualify as refugees under the Geneva Convention, which defines and governs the treatment of refugees.
It is known that a significant proportion of the 155 have already left for the United States and Canada.
But the letters informing them of the decision - which were sent last week - caused panic among Cubans still in Ireland.
It is understood that the unprecedented procedure is l)art of an effort by the Department to clear the backlog of more than 1,000 asylum applications which have been building up since the early 1990s.
However, Department of Justice sources have said that even if the Cubans' appeals are rejected, the Minister, Mrs Owen, will give "careful and sympathetic consideration" to any request by them to be allowed to stay "on humanitarian grounds".
A Department source said yesterday that if the Cubans formulated their letters to the Minister so that they included both appeals against refusal of refugee status and requests to stay on humanitarian grounds, it was unlikely that anyone would be deported.
However, a solicitor who deals with asylum applications has expressed concern that the Department's action might constitute a "group decision" involving citizens of one particular country, and therefore could appear discriminatory.
He also said the Minister's decision to allow the Cubans to stay on humanitarian grounds would be entirely discretionary, unlike the granting of refugee status, which gives an asylum-seeker all the rights of an Irish citizen.
This was confirmed by a Department source who agreed also that the Minister could revoke her decision.
However, this ministerial power is likely to be reviewed in forthcoming legislation.
The source said that if an asylum seeker was allowed to stay on humanitarian grounds, he or she would be able to work, study and travel.
At the moment, the Cubans, like all people who have applied for asylum, are in a kind of legal limbo where they cannot do any of these things.
The solicitor also pointed out that an asylum seeker could not receive free legal aid to appeal against refusal of asylum, because a High Court ruling is awaited on this issue.
The Green Party TD, Mr Trevor Sargeant, who has written to Mrs Owen on behalf of some Cubans and their Russian wives living in his constituency, said last night: "Having come through what they've come through, and been uprooted from their homes and forced to find new homes and friends in a strange country, these people now face the uncertainty of maybe being put on a plane and sent back to a place where some of them have been shot at and imprisoned in horrific conditions."