DRAZEN NOZINIC is one of the lucky ones. Last March, four and a half years after he fled his native Croatia in the former Yugoslavia, he was awarded Irish citizenship. But his experiences highlight the problems facing many asylum seekers in this country, who are denied the right to work and in many instances, the right to free education.

"I was offered a number of teaching jobs when I arrived, but I had to turn them all down," says Nozinic who is an ethnologist and former museum curator. "Because as an asylum seeker I was not allowed to work."

The right of asylum seekers to work is expressly denied in the Refugee Act 1966.

Nozinic's only income was the supplementary welfare allowance, which is awarded to all asylum seekers.

In Ireland, asylum seekers have no automatic right to state funded language classes, education or training and since full time students are excluded from applying for the supplementary welfare allowance, it is impossible for most asylum seekers to pursue third level studies. Schooling for children aged between six and 16 years is compulsory however, and they have free access to primary and second level education.

"The majority of asylum seekers come from countries where social welfare is unknown," Nozinic says, "and dependence on the State creates feelings of helplessness and humiliation". The right to work and the right to education would make a significant contribution to the psychological well being of people who have already suffered persecution and the trauma of leaving home, family and careers behind them, he argues.

Asylum seekers apart, there are a number of other categories of refugees in this country.

Humanitarian permission to remain (HPR) may be granted to an asylum seeker at the discretion of the Minister for Justice. HPR refugees have the right to work and are thus eligible to enrol in Government work schemes or vocational training programmes but have no entitlement to State funded education beyond the age of 16 years.

Situations arise where children of HPR refugees have successfully completed Leaving Certificate and been awarded third level places only to be told that as non EU nationals they must pay fees at overseas rates.

An asylum seeker who becomes the parent of an Irish born child or marries an Irish citizen gains the right of residency and therefore the right to work. Once full refugee status is granted refugees obtain both the right to work and educational rights similar to those of an Irish citizen.

MEANWHILE, quota or programme refugees - who arrived from Vietnam in 1979 and from Bosnia in 1992 - have the right to work and the right to education on the same basis as Irish citizens.

The Department of Education provides specialist educational support for the primary school aged children of these two groups and mother tongue classes are also provided with state funding.

Between January and June 1996, 479 asylum seekers arrived in Ireland, according to the Irish Refugee Council, which is a non government, independent charity providing support services for refugees and asylum seekers. The Irish Council is one of only three EU refugee councils that receive no core funding from the state - the others are in Portugal and Greece. Asylum seekers come from a wide range of countries including Yugoslavia, Romania, Zaire, Somalia, Cuba, Iran and Iraq. Once here, they can expect to wait up to three years - though at least one person has had to wait six years - for Department of Justice decisions on their applications for refugee status.

Many refugees arrive here with little or no English and unlike other European countries our State makes no provision for language classes for them.

The Irish Refugee Council operates a language programme for asylum seekers in Ennis, Co Clare, which is funded by the local VEC, but in Dublin it is forced to rely on volunteer teachers.

"Ennis serves a community of only 80 people but in Dublin we have a catchment group of 1,200," Nadette Foley, who is the council's director, explains. "We're too big to be accommodated by a local education budget and we have applied to the Department of Education for funding... We need a daytime programme and outreach programmes for mothers who are unable to attend the centre."

As it stands, the children of asylum seekers are required by law to attend school in Ireland. Like their parents, many of them have no English and because of the upheavals in their lives, they may have missed out on schooling. In spite of this, they receive no extra supports and classroom teachers are expected to cope with them as best they can.

The Department of Education provides support at primary level to children of the invited Vietnamese and Bosnian refugees and this support has been extended to the children of people who have achieved recognised refugee status. However, "the support is underresourced", Foley says. "There are only four teachers allocated to this work and it is at primary level only."

State funded mother tongue programmes are provided for the Vietnamese and Bosnian children but should be extended to other groups, Drazen Nozinic, who is now the Irish Refugee Council's education research officer, says.

"Research in the US and Britain shows that children who are encouraged to use their mother tongues in school tend to develop faster and achieve greater fluency in English than pupils who are required to receive all their education through English," he says.

The Irish Refugee Council is concerned that while the Refugee Act 1996 defines the rights of people with full refugee status, the rights of other groups remain unclear.

Meanwhile, the needs of these groups are glaringly obvious and include the provision of English language classes and opportunities for further education and training.