Shopkeepers say theft by Romanians is snowballing

THE HAT had been passed around and the donations were generous. But it was only when the collectors ran out the church door that the congregation realised they had been had conned.

Organising bogus collections in this church near Dublin's South Circular Road is only one of the ruses that have given Romanian immigrants a bad name in this and other working class areas of the city.

Down on Camden Street, many shop owners have banned the Romanian families from entering.

"We've had to stop them coming into our shop. Two or three would stand at the till for ages distracting our staff, while others would be stuffing clothes under their coats, into bags, anywhere they could find," said the manager of Age Action Ireland.

"They would even go through the rubbish bags, searching through stuff we were throwing out as rags. Then everything would be left dumped on the floor, just as we'd cleaned up for the weekend."

Across the road in the Simon shop, the problem is the same.

"We just can't cope. We've had to employ extra security. When we spotted a group stuffing stolen clothes into a car last week we contacted the Garda, but they told us it had false number plates," said the manager there.

Although the trouble is caused almost exclusively by Romanians, everyone tends to confuse the issue by calling the thieves "refugees" or "Bosnians".

Ms Brenda Murphy of Fitzpatricks Wholefoods said the problem of theft has "snowballed" in recent weeks. Gardai are "never around", she said, even though their headquarters is around the corner.

Mary, a street trader, is angry that the health board is putting up some Romanian families in rented accommodation in the Liberties at a cost of £380 a month.

"It's a disgrace that I worked 47 years in my life and they just walk into the country and get everything I don't get - a medical card, free rent and £64 a week in the pocket," a colleague said. "But if you look in their heads, from the youngest up, you'll see £500 or £600 worth of teeth, all in gold," he adds.

"It's all right for the English and the French to take these people, because they colonised the world. But I can't understand why the problem is shoved in on Ireland."

Over on the north side Mrs Rose Sheehy shows me the rented flat where she has lived for the past 46 years. The ceiling is stained and the wallpaper is hanging off from where water leaked when the Romanian family upstairs left the taps on all night.

The landlord has not fixed it in five weeks, even though the health board pays him £27 a night for each person he puts up.

Rose said her new neighbours throw their waste over the balcony. Their children are left unattended during the day while the adults are out.

The children amuse themselves by throwing glass and bags of water into the yard, she said. Large groups of men arrive in the evening and keep late hours.

"There's no peace here any more," she said. But it isn't all bad; when a nearby flat went on fire recently, Rose was lifted up and taken away from the blaze by one of her burly, gold toothed neighbours, shouting "Go, mama, go, mama."