The smart new office block in Wexford Business Park, two miles on the Rosslare side of Wexford town, has "worker-friendly" written all over it. Instead of dreary brick and concrete, its architects have created walls of glass that extend right around the chunky centre and up to the top of the three-storey structure.
An American data processing firm, PFPC, is due to occupy the building in the new year. A container load of office furniture arrived from Italy on Saturday morning - a bright, fresh, blue-skied day which made the discovery inside the container of eight bodies seem all the grimmer.
For at least four and maybe eight days, they had lived in darkness. Squeezed into gaps among the furniture, they must have had difficulty moving around to keep cramped limbs from turning numb.
When the ship ran into a storm sometime last Wednesday some of the furniture is likely to have shifted and the stowaways must have feared being crushed.
They must have already been cold and terrified by the time the air supply began dwindling.
Imprisoned in the container, they could not have known where they were or how close they were to freedom.
Truck drivers are used to holding their breath and standing back when they pull open the doors of a newly delivered container.
The stale air and dust takes a moment to clear and there is always the possibility that something has worked its way loose and will coming bouncing to the ground.
But the driver of the Eagle Transport lorry with the jolly yellow container on the back became even more cautious than usual when he approached it along with another man on Saturday morning and saw that the seal had been tampered with.
In the past, tampered seals led to suspicions that the container had been robbed of some of its contents. Nowadays, however, the possibility of a secret human cargo tends to be the first thought of a trans-European lorry driver when he finds a broken seal.
When the two men looked inside, it was immediately obvious that the contents had been disturbed, and they noticed items of clothing.
They closed the container, and summoned garda∅.
Eight bodies and five people seemingly close to death were scattered like rags among the boxes.
Within minutes, police, priests and doctors were arriving; politicians also came to inspect the scene.
Local TD Mr Brendan Howlin of Labour spoke for many when he said the discovery of the bodies was an appalling tragedy which had shocked the community, locally and nationally.
"The suffering endured by the dead and injured, including two small children, during the several days they spent in this sealed metal container is barely imaginable," he said.
"This tragedy demonstrates once again the desperate lengths to which people from deprived and often repressive backgrounds are prepared to go to try and improve circumstances for themselves and their children."
All day on Saturday, the container sat outside the office block as Garda forensic teams and the State Pathologist, Dr John Harbison, went back and forward, trying to glean what information they could from the dead before a series of hearses carried them away.
A few hundred yards away, walkers strolled by, enjoying the fresh air of the brisk morning while youngsters took full advantage of the construction workers' weekend off to hurtle their bikes around the smooth empty tarmac road.
The doors of the container lay partially open, letting in the light so the officers could see to work.