Georghe Antonov's European odyssey took him through Italy and France before he arrived in Ireland last march. A homosexual, Georghe says life had become unbearable back in Transylvania, his home region in Romania.

After unsuccessful applications for asylum in Italy and France, it seemed he had come to the end of the line in Paris. "I thought I would be sent back to Romania. But the policeman gave me a choice. He said to me, `Either you go back to Romania or you can go to Ireland'," Georghe told The Irish Times yesterday.

Georghe travelled on to Cherbourg with a friend. He was fined on the train for not having a ticket. With no money to pay the penalty, he was given a chit and allowed to proceed. In the port the pair cut their way into the back of a canvas-topped lorry, on which they hid until they arrived at Rosslare.

The Department of Justice has rejected his application for asylum here, which was lodged on the basis of persecution he allegedly suffered because of his sexual orientation. He is currently appealing the decision.

Another Romanian, Ioan, fled his home country last year and made it as far as Cherbourg three months ago. His intention was to travel on with a friend to Britain. The two men left the town and walked towards the port to take a ferry across the English Channel.

However, before reaching the port they were stopped by a police patrol, Ioan said yesterday. Having already received a negative response to their application for asylum in France, legally they should have been arrested and returned to Romania.

"This did not happen. The policeman suggested we travel to Ireland instead," says Ioan. The two men evaded customs controls and hid on board the ferry to Rosslare.

These accounts, although unsubstantiated, are broadly in line with the anecdotal evidence of many asylum-seekers in Ireland. One source who works with refugees and asylum-seekers says "quite a few" of his contacts report that the French police did nothing to prevent them leaving France for Ireland, and some encouraged them to do so.

On the other hand, one of the main solicitors handling asylum work in Dublin says she is unaware from her cases of such behaviour by the French police.

When large numbers of Slovakian gypsies attempted to enter the UK last year, British newspapers accused the French authorities of exporting their problem. Some alleged the French were buying tickets for their unwanted guests for the Eurostar train from Paris to London.

About 5,000 asylum-seekers have come to Ireland since the Dublin Convention was introduced at the beginning of last September. Under this EU agreement, Ireland can send back asylum-seekers who arrive from neighbouring states. But only after the other EU states have agreed to process the cases at home.

France and other EU neighbours have been loath to do this. As a result, only a handful of would-be asylum-seekers have been sent back by the Irish authorities.

The Minister for Justice, Mr O'Donoghue, has expressed concern to the French authorities over their implementation of immigration and emigration controls. But his main focus this week has been to promise legislation that will introduce severe sanctions for hauliers caught transporting illegal immigrants.

The collapse of the inter-governmental co-operation envisaged in the Dublin Convention has proved a major headache for the Department of Justice. More than 70 additional staff appointed earlier this year have only just completed their training and have yet to make significant inroads into the backlog of more than 5,000 asylum applications.

The Minister has announced that a further 70 staff will be recruited to the asylum branch. Finally recognising that the phenomenon of asylum-seekers is here to stay, Mr O'Donoghue says the new posts will be permanent, regular Civil Service jobs.

By the end of the year, when almost 200 staff will be working on asylum cases, it is hoped to cut the processing time for cases to about three to six months. At present it takes years to deal with most cases. That is one of the major reasons asylum-seekers are drawn to Ireland, but it also a source of enormous frustration for asylum-seekers who feel they have a good case yet are left in limbo, unable for years to work or clear the worry of insecurity.

Another factor attracting immigration to Ireland is the automatic entitlement of asylum-seekers to supplementary welfare allowances of £65 a week, plus other welfare benefits. As other EU states apply what the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees calls a "lowest common denominator" policy towards asylum-seekers, countries such as France and Britain have withdrawn this entitlement to state support in recent years.

A Government-commissioned comparative study of the provisions for asylum-seekers in different countries is likely to show further differences between Ireland and its neighbours. The Minister has already shown he wants to close these discrepancies by hinting at measures such as the fingerprinting of asylum applicants.

Talk of "genuine refugees" as opposed to illegal immigrants is itself bogus. The fact is that European governments can and do set the bar at whatever height they wish. At the start of this decade refugee flows were relatively low and the West was comparatively generous. Up to half of all applications for asylum were recognised.

Today the numbers have increased and the recognition rate has fallen to about 10 per cent. With asylum-seekers, as with so many other things, the market regulates itself.

If Ireland were to take into account the principle of the UN Declaration on Human Rights and the advice of the UNHCR, it would recognise that gypsies, homosexuals, members of minority religions and ethnic Hungarians have all experienced the lash of racism and discrimination in Romania.

But if, as the Minister seems inclined to do, it wants to take a minimalist approach, it will no doubt point to the fact that Romania is democratic, has a free press and "generally respects" the human rights of its citizens, according to a report of the US State Department last year.

Both approaches miss the real question: how can Ireland respond to the economic and sometimes political misery in so much of the world in such as way as to meet its moral responsibilities, while also catering for the increased labour needs of the Celtic Tiger economy? Answers on a postcard to the Minister.

The names of asylum-seekers in this article are fictitious. Asylum-seekers fleeing from persecution are entitled to remain anonymous; to identify them could place their lives at risk, either in their home country or even in Ireland. The Refugee Act, 1996, provides for fines and/or terms of imprisonment for media that identify asylum-seekers without their permission. This section of the Act has not yet been implemented.

Over the past fortnight virtually all newspapers and other media have carried pictures and names of asylum-seekers, seemingly without their permission.