The State had "forced and starved our young people out of this Republic into nothing except cardboard suitcases", Labour Party TD Mr Emmet Stagg told the Dáil during a debate on the economic plight of Irish emigrants.
Mr Stagg said that "now we are leaving them, old, homeless, and alone, to be buried as paupers in cardboard coffins.
"We have the resources and the road map. When we implement it, only then can we call ourselves a Republic."
The North Kildare TD was speaking on the Labour Party motion calling for Government action to assist Irish emigrants, who moved to Britain in the 1950s and 1960s, who now lived in desperate conditions.
The motion, defeated by 72 votes to 56, called for the implementation of the Task Force report on emigrants, whose recommendations included increased financial assistance to voluntary agencies and programmes abroad.
Mr Stagg said that the 800,000 emigrants of the 1950s and 1960s "sent home some (Irish)£3.5 billion in present values".
Mr Stagg said that the young men and women in "de Valera's republic had no option and were practically forced to emigrate to get work simply to survive".
The process of going "took some time and a lot of heart- rending discussion" and the first to leave was always the hardest, with a cardboard suitcase, two shirts, some socks, working clothes and shoes and some minor personal belongings.
He said that "our 'great Republic' forced them out in their tens of thousands onto the cattle boats and into doss houses. They were forced to queue in the early morning for any chance of a job and would only then get paid in pubs.
They laid sewers, built the roads, drove the buses and, as nurses, cared for the sick."
Mr Stagg said he was the beneficiary of the money they sent back.
"We were able to buy clothes, shoes and food. We paid school fees and we bought books with the money they sent home. This allowed us to break out of the black hole of poverty.
It broke the damned cycle of poverty and ignorance."
Mr Martin Ferris (SF, Kerry South) said it was ironic that on the day the Dáil was discussing the "shabby treatment of our emigrants" by the State.
"The Government should have published the Immigration Bill, designed to infringe the rights of those who have come here.
"If we, as a people, have learnt anything from our history, it ought surely to be tolerance and hospitality to those who come to our country."
The Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Mr Tom Kitt, said that while "some of our emigrants have experience difficulties in coping with life abroad, the responsibility for dealing with this does not fall solely on the Irish Government.
"The host governments of the countries in question have a duty to care for vulnerable or marginalised people whatever their country of origin and the local Irish communities have a responsibility to help their less fortunate compatriots."