The gypsies were different. Everyone was agreed on that. With their flowing floral skirts and broad smiles featuring entire mouthfuls of gold teeth, the women were an instant hit. Wednesday midday at Rathangan parish hall saw half a dozen of them out on the floor, clapping hands and stamping feet in a sprightly folk dance. They shyly displayed their sewing skills. Clothing donations that failed to fit had been beautifully re-fashioned into traditional frilly aprons of the kind worn by all the women.

While the 17-year-old blind girl among them cajoled the stranger to join the dancing, their children too were winning hearts: walking arm in arm with the local women and their children, suddenly pulling them into exuberant hugs, making licking motions to suggest a passion for ice cream, kicking a ball around the GAA field.

Back inside, the men presented a different picture: a gloomier, more watchful presence, sprawled on the sleeping bags and mattresses, some working on jigsaws or colouring books commandeered from the children, others making puffing gestures in the desperate, endless hunt for cigarettes.

Local women in this very rural community were clearly a little rattled. "The men are very domineering, we've noticed," said one hesitantly, ". . . but that's the culture", she added, trying to be even-handed. Rathangan had already provided a lesson in parity of esteem for these gentlemen. Asked by Brendan Gallagher to help with the sweeping and cleaning the men's lavatories, the group leader imperiously summoned up three of the women, whereupon Mr Gallagher placed the brushes pointedly in the hands of the men. The lesson stuck. When the group was packing up to leave for St Peter's College on Wednesday afternoon, several men were sweeping the floor.

There were touching scenes as the little bus prepared to pull away. Children hugged local women fiercely; the Romanian women looked tearful and made writing gestures to suggest they would stay in touch. One man given a photograph of a local woman and her husband placed it reverently in his wallet beside a holy picture of Christ. He produced both frequently in the next few days - one as proof of the kindness of strangers, the other as an illustration of alleged persecution at home. "Interdit . . . polizia. Catholique . . . orthodox," he said, pointing at the holy picture and blessing himself, suggesting religious oppression by police.

But the gypsies' stories glimmer and fade. Why has this other man left his wife and children behind? "Perdu", answers his friend in the smattering of French that many of them seem to have. "Lost". Lost where? The friend confers again. ". . . en Irlande". Lost in Ireland? A babble of confusion. Finally, the friend says. "In Romanie". And there the conversation dies.

But the word "persecution" raises its head regularly. It is said that men are forced to pay protection money to the police. A parent of one is said to have been murdered, another to have been killed or injured by landmines. Who knows? They look physically healthy and vital. So what can it be that drives such people to risk their children's lives in a sealed container, to eat dog food and go without water for 20 hours, to arrive with raw throats and streaming eyes, gasping for drops of water from the hoses used to wash them down on the quayside?

"I have served in Wexford for 30 years and this was the closest to a coffin ship I ever saw", said Garda Joe McCarthy. "You knew by the smell that there were people in there. There was urine flowing out the back. They were like . . . they were like pigs to the slaughter. They were roaring to get out. The first person we saw was when they threw down a child that I was sure was dead".

It was a bank holiday Saturday evening and suddenly Martina Donoghue, a young woman from Wexford County Council's housing department, found herself with 44 Romanian asylumseekers to accommodate - 32 of them gypsy family groups and a group of 12 young single men who had travelled in a separate container.

In a town already chronically short of short-term or long-term housing, she rang the local presbytery and came up with Rathangan parish hall, a townland - "not even a village, just a road", as one local woman put it - accessed by more than 10 miles of narrow, twisting roads. Seven of the single men were sent to a hostel in Bunclody; five remained in Rathangan, sleeping upstairs.

"It was said that the single men refused to share the hall with the gypsies," said Ms Donogue, "but I can tell you, it was never even offered to them. It wouldn't have been appropriate to accommodate them with the family groups. I never even knew it was an issue until I saw it in the paper."

Nonetheless, there were ominous signs. In uncanny echoes of attitudes within Ireland, ordinary Romanian asylum-seekers recoiled from their gypsy compatriots. "No, they are not liked in Romania," said one. "Among other things, they are seen to have no respect for the law. But yes, I would say some of them are persecuted . . ."

Similarly, these "ordinary" asylum-seekers would also claim to be persecuted, albeit in a way that may not conform to everyone's image of someone in need of political asylum. No one claims that his life is in danger, for example, but many of them talk of a life of unremitting gloom and hopelessness, and of daily breaches of civil rights.

"Most of those who have problems suffer because their parents were in the Communist regime," said one. "In that situation, you do not have a private life. Your phone may be tapped. The police will watch you night and day and for no reason. They will search your house without any warrants. They do not respect the law. There are good police and bad police but more bad than good and they don't care for civil rights. When I was as young as 15, I noticed that if you have money, you will have no problem with the police."

This account is corroborated by others who claim to have been in similar situations. "I received a lot of persecution from the police with no reason that I know of. The police will show you official-looking papers saying that you owe them money. If you question them, they say `I have more education than you, I am your superior'. I tried to use to use the courts to take recourse but the police and the courts, they are the same family."

One young man, aware that Romanian asylum-seekers had been denounced by their own embassy on Wednesday as "illegal immigrants who are only here to live on the social welfare", insisted vehemently that his claim for asylum will be proven and that a question be put to the Romanian government: "How can the Romanian government explain why I personally want to renounce Romanian citizenship and to live here?"

Young men like these don't claim that life for everyone in Romania is miserable. In fact one of them admits that he knows of some asylum-seekers who have no problem at all there but just thought: "Let's see Ireland." He says that some of them are lying and that no one can check their papers. A lot of them are talking about going back to France. The ones who stay ironically may not be those most in love with the Irish welfare system but those most determined to make a decent life for themselves, legally.

Tony Ionescu, for example, could have remained in Italy as an illegal where he has relations, working in restaurants or in construction. But the 20-year-old is ambitious. He has four languages and wants to be a journalist. But he also believes that to open doors in Romania, money is the key. "If I saved, say, $50,000, I could go back and have a safe life there".

He is no victim. Proud and resourceful, he simply walked through customs from Hungary into Austria by choosing one of the busiest days of the year, a major holiday in March. From there he went to Rome by train and tried to get to Canada in a sealed metal container, which would have involved five days on land and 15 days at sea. After 60 hours of sweltering in 35 degrees in a container that scorched to the touch, they tried to enlarge the air hole in the container floor and were caught.

Ordered to leave Italy within 15 days, six weeks later he was in Cherbourg, on an articulated lorry bound for Ireland, with 19 others. He knew from the grapevine that Le Havre was out (heavily guarded due to the numbers trying to get to Canada) as was Calais. He claims to have approached a man at Cherbourg, who arranged the deal. The others had arranged the crossing from Austria through a Tunisian, having paid DM300 to DM400 each for the trip. No one searched the trailer in Rosslare - officials were preoccupied presumably by another group found on the same ferry - and the lorry driver parked up the trailer and drove away in the cab.

"We began to make noise then and someone heard us. The police had no guns - that was the first surprise - and they said `Don't run, you don't have to be scared' ". It was a courteous welcome and one that continues to be extended by Wexford's hard-pressed social services and many of its citizens.

The dearth of private rented accommodation means that many of these young men remain in bed-and-breakfasts (90 per cent funded by the Department of the Environment) which, in spite of the obvious kindness of the proprietors, means that they have to spend much of the day on the streets. Those who want to better themselves by, say, learning English therefore have no facilities to do so, a situation fostered by the State whose guidelines specifically state that while the claims of non-nationals are being processed "it would be inappropriate for the State to give aid to assist their integration into the State".

Nor are they allowed to work, which again feeds growing local prejudice of a sort expressed by one Wexford man: "Them lads wouldn't recognise a day's work if it got up and hit them." But they're not allowed to work . . . "Well, when the Irish go foreign, they have to make their way from the minute they get there, legal or not. Why can't these lads do the same? There's no handouts for our own when they go away. But these lads are getting the best of everything, living in them big glamorous apartments that our own wouldn't even get a look into and trying to make the young ones pregnant so they can say they fathered an Irish child".

How did he know this? "Didn't I read it in the local paper . . .?" It's the stock answer in Wexford these days from many who finally confess that the only place they've actually seen a Romanian was in the papers. The impression is firmly in place that immigrants get benefits not available to "our own proud poor" as one shopkeeper put it, who added grimly that he had worked since the day he left school.

This propaganda has given rise to outright violence as when a hall was stoned and attempts made to break the locks and threats shouted to burn out the occupants. At least two young asylum-seekers have been set upon and one so badly beaten that he sought a transfer elsewhere.

So, apart from working 12-hour days sometimes and over weekends, trying to care for homeless, penniless foreigners without a common language, the four people at the coalface of Wexford's social services - Barbara Ryan and Joe Hayden from the South Eastern Health Board and Niall McDonnell and Martina Donoghue of Wexford County Council's housing department - find themselves obliged to fend off allegations about pampering asylum-seekers in luxury apartments, providing designer clothes, paying accounts in restaurants run up by immigrants, and lashing out extravagant benefits allowing the latter to wire as much as £500 back to Romania.

In vain do they repeat that the maximum a single person can get is £68.40 a week (funded entirely by the Department of Social, Community and Family Affairs) or that a single person in shared private rented accommodation gets a maximum of £29 a week towards the rent. If they live in luxury apartments such as those in Melrose Court (which they maintain exquisitely), it's because they are prepared to share.

If they receive a one-off exceptional needs payment of £50, it is because they own only the clothes they stand up in and clearly need a change. (The gypsies who stayed in Rathangan, for example, will not receive this because they were showered with clothes by the generous local community). They repeat - in vain - that there are no extra supplements.

"It should be pointed out that up to 400 people were availing of rent subsidies at the same level before a Romanian ever stepped off a boat. And that there are lone parents from Wexford also living in Melrose Court. It is totally false to say that any asylum-seeker is getting preferential treatment", said Niall McDonnell. "I've noticed that they are very frugal people," said Barbara Ryan, "they seem to keep and manage money every week".

But for all their determined coping skills and smiles, there is a sense that Wexford's problem is becoming unmanageable. This week more than 200 Romanians were living in Wexford, as well as over a dozen asylum-seekers from Russia, Kosovo, Lebanon, Bulgaria and Tajikhistan. "We would be very happy to receive any offers of help from neighbouring local authorities", said Niall McDonnell.

But they're still waiting. The only practical help has come from private sources and from the Catholic Church which gave Rathangan hall for no payment (not to mention the remarkably Christian enthusiasm of the Rathangan parishioners) and agreed to rent out St Peter's seminary for a couple of weeks.

"Maybe it's something in our collective unconscious, but there are echoes of our own forebears in all this," said Father Oliver Doyle, president of St Peter's. "But I notice that people are trying to put a spin on the situation now, that these latest arrivals - the gypsies - are of a certain caste and are somehow different or less deserving. But whoever emigrated in an Armani suit? Did the Irish in Boston of the 1850s and 50s have designer shawls?"

Meanwhile, out at Rosslare port on Thursday, a few gardai without decent facilities of their own limbered up like gymnasts for the tedious but physically demanding task of searching every inch of every trailer and container coming through the cargo ferry, the European Pathfinder. No asylum-seeker came out with his hands up for the police and media cameras. We saw only the detritus of those who had been caught on the French side that morning - half a litre of urine in a mineral bottle and some litter.

"Well, it seems the French are doing their job for a change," sighed a garda, "but we've heard all that before. I wonder how long it'll last for this time?" Not long, according to one Romanian. "Even now, Cherbourg still has possibilities. And I know we can arrange to get to Canada from Ireland."