The weekend's tragedy in Co Wexford has drawn attention to the cruel and lucrative global trade in people-smuggling and measures to combat it.
But it has also put under the spotlight the asylum and immigration regimes operated within the EU, which play a part in creating the conditions which drive desperate people to take such desperate measures.
Heads of State meeting in Brussels this week would do well to bear this in mind when they discuss the proposed EU warrant covering the smuggling and trafficking of people.
If the deaths of migrants in freight containers, on the undercarriages of trains or in ships' holds illustrates anything, it's that responses to migration based purely on policing the illegal movement of people will not stop people moving, and risking their lives while doing so.
Migration from poor to rich countries is a fact of life. It will continue as long as inequalities remain in the world; as long as half the world lives on $2 a day and the wealthiest 20 per cent continue to control up to 80 per cent of the world's resources.
Human trafficking and smuggling, a by-product of these inequities, is a growth industry. And as long as the lethal trade remains profitable, the smugglers and traffickers will continue to defy laws and their human cargo will continue to die cruel deaths.
Hundreds of thousands of migrants are living illegally in EU countries, deprived of basic social rights. While, by definition, there are no concrete statistics in this area, figures from states which granted recent amnesties are an indication of the extent of migratory trends.
Three amnesties by Italy in the 1990s led to 716,000 people, mostly from north Africa and the Balkans, being regularised. In Spain, 260,000 people, mostly north African, were regularised in the 1990s and 2000. In Portugal, 61,000 people from sub-Saharan Africa and South America were regularised in the 1990s.
While security measures to tackle illegal migration have their place, they must be accompanied by proper immigration possibilities which would mean that fewer people are forced to hide in containers in order to enter the EU.
The EU is working towards a community immigration policy. Harmonisation of migration laws at EU level would help regulate internal migration, as well as facilitating the balance between freedom of movement within the common travel area with states' security interests.
People who can enter a country legally to work will be less inclined to risk their lives in containers.
This undermines the smugglers' trade. It also sends out a positive image of immigrants as a productive people contributing to society.
Their employment rights would be properly protected and some of the money they earn may be sent back to their countries of origin. If they decide to return home, they will bring their skills back with them. If they decide to remain, they will enrich the host country.
Ireland's immigration system consists of the fairly well developed asylum regime and the more embryonic immigrant labour regime. The Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform is conducting a detailed review of the immigration system in response to the rise in immigration into the State in recent years. Any new legislation arising from this review, which includes a study of international practice and public consultation, will replace the 1935 Aliens Act. It will set out procedures for those applying for work, study visas and residence permits here.
But until new mechanisms are put in place, we continue to have a fairly ad-hoc and crude regime controlling immigrant labour, which relies largely on work permits. Work permits are issued to an employee to work for a particular employer, which means the worker is not free to sell his or her labour on the open market.
This leaves the employee open to being abused, such as occurred in Hannon's poultry plant in Co Roscommon.
The Labour Relations Commission recently found that the plant had been making illegal deductions from the wages of three Brazilian workers.
The Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment last week announced that employers must from next month offer Irish and European nationals first choice of available jobs before turning to other immigrant labour under the work permits scheme.
The tightening of the work permit regime comes amid recent job losses and predictions of an economic slowdown.
But despite the vagaries of the labour market, immigration is here to stay. Clearly a more comprehensive system is needed to reflect that ongoing reality.
In the absence of efficient immigration systems, irregular migrants often resort to the asylum channel, which is both an abuse of the asylum process and a security challenge.
But restrictions such as stricter document controls, measures to target smuggling and trafficking and carrier sanctions are making it more and more difficult for refugees to enter Europe. Even refugees have to resort to smugglers.
And very often they travel without proper identity papers. It is inevitable that travel restrictions will screen out asylum-seekers, who have an absolute right to seek a state's protection on the grounds that they are fleeing persecution regardless of the state of their paperwork.
We have seen evidence of this happening in Ireland already. The Minister for Justice, Mr O'Donoghue, admitted last February that people who may be trying to enter the State to seek asylum have been turned back at the French port of Cherbourg because they do not have adequate documentation.
This is due to increased security checks on people boarding ferries on the route from Cherbourg to Rosslare, Co Wexford. Leading bishops have repeatedly criticised the Government over this policy of "pre-emptive exclusion" which has led to a dramatic drop in the number of asylum-seekers making claims at the port.
While only a small percentage of asylum-seekers reaching Ireland's shores will be successful in their claim for protection as refugees, this is no justification for the almost blanket denial of access which has happened in Rosslare. The fact that they can claim asylum in France is no excuse for Ireland effectively extending its borders beyond its physical frontiers.
Mr O'Donoghue said yesterday the cases of the Wexford survivors would receive "sympathetic and humane consideration" if they applied to remain in Ireland. "I have no intention of saying no room at the inn to these human beings," he said.
While this sentiment is laudable and no doubt sincere, one has to ask whether there would have been any room at the inn had the 13 unfortunate asylum-seekers attempted to board a ferry in Cherbourg, on foot and without proper travel documents, instead of being crane-lifted on to one in a container at the Belgian port of Zeebrugge.
Nuala Haughey is Social and Racial Affairs Correspondent