THE NEW IRISH: For one Filipino family, living in Ireland means one partner working while the other is forced to stay in the home. Kathy Sheridan reports

The Phibsborough flat is small, even by one-bedroom standards. Too small for a family of four but still bigger than the bedsit Arlene and Jo Jo Diaz and their little daughter had to settle for in the early days.

Arlene has been on night duty and Jo Jo, an architectural technician and musician, is putting the finishing touches to the dishes Arlene prepared earlier. It's her 33rd birthday and there is beef, three kinds of delicious Filipino-style chicken and a delicately flavoured sticky rice, followed by a fruit salad.

This reporter is mortified to find herself automatically included. The other guest, Don Brennock of the Filipino-Irish Association, throws a meaningful look; it says you never leave a Filipino home without eating. It's simply not polite. What they have they share.

The size of the little living room cum kitchen, for example, does not deter the Filipino Choir from holding its Mass rehearsals here every week, directed by Jo Jo on his keyboard. Twenty people singing their hearts out in a tiny apartment with multiple neighbours just feet away? Isn't there blue murder every week? "We make sure all the doors are closed," grins Arlene.

Arlene, who is the product of an expensive four-year nursing degree, funded by loans, arrived in Dublin with the first wave of Filipino nurses, in July 2000. As the eldest child of five in a poor family, the move was inevitable when her father, a driver and mechanic, was made redundant after 20 years. Bringing additional shame and distress for her parents was the fact that they couldn't afford to fund their son's further education.

For Arlene, already supplementing her full-time job by working alongside Jo Jo for a realty company, that was the clincher. "When my father couldn't promise my brother that they could send him to college, that's when I decided." The decision was very hard, she says. "I'm a typical homebody. I'm a father's girl. But I had been preparing myself to go alone." Going alone meant leaving Jo Jo and their little daughter, Maria Cristina Michelle - known as Michelle - behind.

The choice was between the UK and Ireland, and when her mentor said that Irish people were as hospitable as the Filipinos - and "of course, religious" - that tipped the scales. "I had been very active in the Church since I was nine years old. I was in the Legion of Mary and in the Catholic charismatic movement. At one point I thought I'd actually be a nun," she laughs.

Although Arlene swiftly secured "Harney visas" for Jo Jo and Michelle, there were other considerations before they could join her. "You have to prepare: find accommodation, open a bank account, prove you can afford to support them - and, of course, there were the fares."

They finally arrived a year later. In the meantime her introduction to Ireland as a highly trained professional came in the shape of a tiny shared room with bunk beds and no privacy in the old nurses' residence at Mater Misericordiae University Hospital. "That was a surprise," she says.

As was the variety of Irish accents that bombarded her in the early days, despite her fluent English. There were a few "medical" terms to surmount as well. "Back home, for example, we would say: 'Did you defecate?' Here we learned to say did you 'move your bowel' or 'do number two'?" And sunny as the summer of 2000 might have been for Irish bones, Arlene and her compatriots were layering themselves in thermals and long johns.

On the other hand she found the Irish even friendlier than Filipinos. "People just passing would say hello, good morning. Back home you only do that with people you know." That has faded, however. "I think it's more the old people who do it. A patient said to me, 'I think we're losing that,' so I don't think it's because we're Filipinos."

She has good stories and bad about Irish attitudes. Three years ago, while walking back from work to the north-Dublin house she shared with colleagues, she was mugged while four local teenagers who had already blocked the footpath stood and watched. "I lost my ID, my professional licence from back home and," she groans, "about £100 \, because I held the kitty for the house. I had never experienced such a thing before, even though I lived in a city back home and often passed through rough areas."

On the upside, when a garda arrived the response was beyond the call of duty. "He drove us around to see if we could spot the man and advised us to move from that area. He visited us from time to time after that, and when we found another place in Castleknock he even checked that out for us."

Last year, when out with Jo Jo, Michelle and their Irish baby, Kenneth - now 18 months old and born with leg complications - they were managing to ignore the repeated mutters of a respectable-looking woman, telling them to go back where they came from, until she turned on the baby, "that bastard". Only then did Arlene take her on, declaring that she was working here and paying her taxes.

Ireland has its compensations. When her father had a heart attack, a year after she arrived, she was able to pay for his expensive medicine and private-hospital bills, "only because I am here". Aside from that, more than a third of the family's income is dispatched to the Philippines every month, destined for their families.

And she has nothing but praise for the principal and teachers at Corpus Christi national school on Home Farm Road, where Michelle, who spoke no English, was the school's first Filipino pupil. "It was hard for her. She would get her yes and no mixed up, and that caused problems with other pupils. But the teachers gave her extra tuition."

She skates over the enormous pressure of being the sole breadwinner for the extended family, both here and back home, a burden that explains why so many Filipino nurses take on agency work in addition to their full-time jobs. But the hardest part for first-wavers like her was dealing with the predictable emotional and psychological fall-out for any traditional male forced into the role of unemployed, dependent spouse by Irish immigration law, as Jo Jo has been.

Although the law has been relaxed (though still limiting), and Jo Jo has embarked on a work-orientation course, there is little sign of relief back home. As her brother's university course approaches an end the focus falls on the other siblings. "That's the theme back home now," she says wryly.

So there is little scope for luxuries. Like so many immigrants they miss the network of babyminders they would have at home. Social outings are a rarity. They never go to the pub. "When we were three we were members of the UGC cinema in Parnell Street, but it's not really possible now. That's why you see all the DVDs here." Sometimes, when she's recovering from night duty, Jo Jo takes Michelle window-shopping.

If she won the Lotto would she want to stay in Ireland? "If I won the Lotto I'd go back to the Philippines and sort all my relatives there," she says instantly. "Then I'd come back and work."

The desire for a settled existence and their own home is a pressing one, however. For many Filipino nurses the US is looking very attractive, with its offers of 100 per cent mortgages and cars.

Of the nurses she shared the north-Dublin house with, one is now in the UK, one in the US and one in Canada. A fourth married an Irishman.

"I would love to stay in Ireland," she says, "but it's really about the cost of living, about the opportunity to get your own home. I feel that will not happen soon." There is also the matter of residency rights. "The criteria are not clear at all. There is no stability."

How would she vote in the citizenship referendum? "The law should be changed. Some are abusing the system. It's really obvious that they just want an Irish-born child. It's not fair to the Irish Government. Also, the Government could do more to encourage healthy people who can work to get off welfare. The whole populationis affected by these things."