If a parent did to any other child what the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform does to the children of asylum-seekers, the social workers would be called in.
Weight-loss due to malnutrition and confinement in stressful, psychologically damaging circumstances is enough to warrant an investigation into possible child neglect.
Yesterday's report from the Irish Refugee Council describes a system which does that, and worse, to children and their parents. Under the mean-spirited and vicious policy of "direct provision", we send people to hostels around the country where entire families are confined to one room.
Many of these hostels expect people from vastly different backgrounds to subsist on a diet of cereal and sausages, beans and chips. If some of these people happen to be new-born babies, then too bad: sausages, beans and chips is what is on the menu and is the only thing that is on the menu.
That menu is paid for by a Government department with the words "Justice" and "Equality" in its name. So parents buy powdered milk for their children out of the £7.50 a week for each child we give them in our generosity.
They also, out of that £7.50 a week, have to buy nappies, clothes, talcum powder, creams and all the rest of it.
Is it any wonder that they end up rationing their own babies' food, skipping meals, watering down their formula? Or that having your child immunised is impossible if you've been sent to some remote location and cannot afford the taxi to get you to the doctor?
As the child grows up he or she stands a good chance of seeing his parents shouted at and belittled by hostel staff. These parents will not have the right even to get themselves or their children a glass of water from the kitchen.
Staff will move them from room to room and there is nothing their parents can do about it. Children will notice that and will draw their own conclusions about the worth of their parents.
Tensions - not surprisingly under the circumstances - will be high. Children will be shouted at by other adults. They will see rows breaking out. They will have no privacy whatsoever.
That these children's mental health is being damaged is so obvious as to almost go without saying. Socially, mentally and physically they are being stunted.
We must be grateful to the researchers who have revealed this scandal to us. Dr Bryan Fanning (UCD), Dr Angela Veale (UCC) and Ms Dawn O'Connor (UCC) have left us in no doubt as to what is going on. They have, in a sense, left us nowhere to hide. They have told us what is happening and we cannot claim we do not know what is going on.
The academics have done their bit. It is now up to the Government to redeem itself by getting rid of this wretched "direct provision" policy.
The fact is that these things are not being done by authoritarian nuns and brothers in an authoritarian era. This is being done under the policy of a Government Department by people acting in our names, with our knowledge and with our consent.
Think about that, during the forthcoming season of peace and harmony, as we stand in our warm churches commemorating the birth of a baby who was lucky to spend his first days in a stable and not as a recipient of "direct provision" from a slightly Christian nation.
pomorain@irish-times.ie