Record on state care of children under attack

There has been a call for Romania to be moved down the EU accession list because of its treatment of children. Mr John Mulligan, chairman of the Focus on Romania group, said it should join Turkey, whose EU membership is on hold because of its human rights record.

In a statement last night he said: "The callous treatment of four-year-old Mihaela Porumbaru by the Romanian authorities this week has once again raised the spectre of the fate of children and young adults in state care in Romania.

"Ten years after the West became aware of the plight of the inmates of Romanian orphanages, almost nothing has changed for the better for these unfortunate children".

Despite millions of dollars of foreign aid "children still sleep four to a bed in filthy conditions without adequate nutrition. Inadequate sanitation, abuse and beating of children by untrained staff, and the theft of donated clothing and food from the inmates of these concentration camps, are still the norm.

"Access to education or therapy is not even on the agenda. The Romanian government simply does not care about the plight of its weakest citizens," he said. The children were "unwanted, in every sense of the word."

This situation was "a result of Government policy in respect of children and young adults in state care". The Romanian government caused the problem and it could solve it, "but they need to be encouraged to do so," he said.

Romania receives approximately six billion euros each year in EU cohesion funding, in preparation for its eventual membership of the Union, he said.

"We would like to see the Irish Government raising this issue at European level, with the aim of making this funding contingent on improvements in childcare in state institutions," he said, and until improvements were made Romania should be moved down the accession list to join Turkey.

"If Irish politicians make a start right now and take up this matter at European level some progress can be made quickly. Otherwise these children will continue to live and die in conditions in which it would be illegal to keep pigs in this country, and cases like that of Mihaela Porumbaru will still be in the news in 10 years hence," he said.