'Every day a struggle' in Romania

Molodovar George, from a rural area near the city of Oradea in northwestern Romania, says he "borrowed money and sold all possessions" to pay his €200 fare to Ireland.

The middle-aged man came with his daughter and son-in-law and their four children. The Roma family has been living in teepee-type, plastic covered structures on a patch of mud off the M50 roundabout near Ballymun for a month now.

About 30 Roma people remained between here and another makeshift camp across the road yesterday morning following the departure of about 70 others earlier who have opted to return to Romania.

"The police came and took many people this morning," he says. "The people who were interpreting for the police told us we had to go, said we would get €40 if we went. But can stay for another 15 days. I don't know what will happen then," he says.

Speaking through an interpreter he says he owes "so much money at home" and has no prospect of work there. "So I am not going back any time soon."

Dressed in mud-slashed trousers, a mid-length jacket, sandals, socks and a woollen hat, he tells how he flew via Budapest to Dublin. "At the airport the Hungarians asked us lots of questions. The Irish didn't ask any."

He and his family heard "it was good living standard in Ireland".

People already living here told him he could get work in construction. "I am a tiler. I build. I could build a whole house. But I know no one here who will give me a job."

Asked about life in Romania, he says he had work "all the time when there was communism. Now no one will give a job to Roma. Every day is struggle. Struggling to get food, worry about where to get food for your children, clothes for your children. So then you do things you don't like to do, to survive, like stealing."

Their Irish home was yesterday reached down a wet, dirty path trampled into the mud, to the collection of about 10 small handmade shacks. Packaging, teabags and clothing sat deep in mud across the site; clothes hung on a makeshift line between two trees; the place smelt faintly of human waste and, probably, rotting food. Asked about the living condition here, Mr George shrugs his shoulders. "It's not a good living standard but it's better than Romania." At home he lived in a "house made of horseshit and straw".

Across the road, in the roundabout, is another muddy path down to where 31 year-old Marvara Rostas and her five-month old son, Atei, remained living yesterday.

"They came this morning and sort of scooped them up," she says of the others' departure. "I said 'I don't want to go'." She is here with her aunt and uncle and says she is fleeing a violent, alcoholic husband as well as poverty. She shows a deep scar on her neck she says was inflicted by her husband.

She was told by a Roma family at home she "would have a good life" in Ireland and her family raised money to send her here. Asked what she thinks now, she replies: "I don't know what to believe anymore."