How do you get to spend time in prison if you have been found guilty of no crime? asks Breda O'Brien. Or if you are a child, to spend time in hospital when you are not sick?
These questions sound like the cryptic riddles so beloved of children, who triumphantly shout the answer at bewildered adults. The only bewildering thing is that it happens at all, in a society that considers itself civilised.
The answer to the first question is that non-EU nationals often spend time in prison while awaiting deportation.
Such people have not been found guilty of any crime. Some have made application for asylum and have been turned down. At any one time, according to Father Ciaran Enright of National Prison Chaplains, there are up to 30 people awaiting deportation in prison. Many have language difficulties and suffer enormous stress because it is so difficult to secure accurate information as to what will happen to them, and when. Prison chaplains say that this stress has led to at least two attempts at suicide.
As their Annual Report points out: "Some come from harsh military, political and religious regimes and are terrified at the prospect of being deported back to their homelands."
In addition, families are separated, sometimes with men and women held in different prisons, or in other cases one parent and the children are deported weeks in advance of the other parent. Other non-nationals are incarcerated because they are a so-called case of refusal of "leave to land", which is when the immigration authorities have decided not to let them land at all, but to send them back where they came from by the next available flight. In the meantime, they may be kept in prison, either overnight or in some cases for a couple of days.
Many women end up in Dochas, the Women's prison in Mountjoy, or in Limerick Prison, often with small babies in their arms.
The older children who came with them supply the answer to the second riddle. How do you get to spend time in hospital as a child if you are not sick? In what are known as social admissions, such children are separated from their parents and spend overnight or much longer in a children's hospital. In recent years this has been a regular occurrence.
In one refusal of "leave to land" known to the Irish Refugee Council, a mother was sent overnight to prison. Meanwhile her two children, one of whom has a serious disability and neither of whom spoke English, spent the night in a paediatric unit in the company of a social worker.
It is not difficult to imagine the anguish suffered by both mother and children. Such heavy-handedness does nothing to dispel suspicions that legitimate asylum-seekers are being prevented from applying for asylum by refusing them leave to land, which of course the Department of Justice insists is not happening.
Social admissions leave paediatric units and children's hospitals in an invidious position. As Mr Paul Cunniffe, chief executive officer of Temple Street Hospital, put it to me: "The hospital's policy is not to refuse the needs of a child who has no alternative accommodation. However, it is the firm view of the hospital that the social and emotional needs of a child who is not ill cannot be adequately met in an acute hospital situation."
There is a desperate need for secure accommodation that would allow families to stay together. Already overstretched hospital staff should not have to deal with children who are often terrified, but completely healthy. Health boards, whose statutory obligation it is to provide for children in these circumstances, are strapped for resources.
More importantly, there has been an almost complete absence of the kind of humane political leadership which would insist: "This is wrong. This is unacceptable. We can and must change it." Instead, it seems as if the opposite view is prevailing.
Take the situation of non-national parents of Irish-born children. They were practically guaranteed residency rights, by virtue of the fact that a child has the right to the company and care of his or her parents. That all changed in January 2003 when a Supreme Court decision undermined the right to residency. Some 11,000 people are now in limbo.
There is ample anecdotal evidence that community welfare officers advised asylum-seekers to withdraw their applications for refugee status in favour of applying for residency. Some may now reactivate their application for asylum, but it means starting the whole weary process again.
However, if they dropped the asylum application at appeal stage, they may only reinstitute their application with the consent of the Minister. The Minister has it in his gift to grant leave to remain.
In a further twist, at the moment leave to remain can only be applied for if a deportation order has been issued. A dangerous form of Russian roulette ensues. If the Minister fails to grant leave to remain, and a deportation order is carried out, the result is permanent exclusion from Ireland and EU states. What use is the child's Irish citizenship if parents can never again set foot in the country?
The asylum-seeking process has been greatly speeded up, but there is some evidence that quality has been sacrificed for speed. It is quite extraordinary that of the 2,000 people who were granted refugee status in 2002, more than 50 per cent did not receive it in the first instance, but had to appeal in order to be recognised as refugees.
What kind of a system makes the wrong decision the first time, more often than not? A Leaving Cert student making that level of mistakes would be in deep trouble.
We desperately need a fairer system for asylum-seekers, and a legitimate channel of immigration for others. The terrifying possibility is that some of those who are in limbo because of the Supreme Court decision, if their application to remain fails, may spend time in prison before deportation. Nor are they alone in this predicament. Meanwhile, their healthy children may spend time alone in hospital, all in a country where they sought refuge, and a better life.