Micheal Martin needs doctors. John O'Donoghue had one in Mountjoy Jail - until yesterday when the courts ordered that the man be freed. Simple, ain't it? Not here. Today the Government must assure Romano Prodi that the vote against Nice was not a vote against enlargement. But its actions this week indicate a nasty case of the reverse.
For entirely pragmatic reasons, the Government must convince its EU trading partners and their proposed new allies that xenophobia and exclusion play no part whatever in the No result. The trouble is that the Government still hasn't worked out what happened. No one in Government can imagine an open, contemporary brand of Irish sovereignty.
Desperately passing the baton from hand to hand to see which approach works, it is second-guessing what are in fact old prejudices that most voters have left far behind. And the first banana skin in sight happens to be the issue of refugees and asylum-seekers. The breathtaking political carelessness shown this week in the latest saga of the let-them-work debate bodes badly for what may come.
The message to Europe reinforced over the last few days is that Ireland wants to keep everyone except tourists and investors out. After four years in Government, John O'Donoghue has failed to create a cohesive strategy for refugees' reception, integration and deportation. He has failed to meet his own targets for processing applications.
By repeatedly reminding us that the "success" rate is only 7 per cent (under a narrow interpreted convention written before he was born), he gives his officials a marker that there must be something wrong if their recommendations come in higher. By keeping applicants away from the places where Irish people integrate with each other - work, restaurants, pubs, creches - he has created the kind of social and cultural ghettos he swore he was going to avoid.
The Catholic bishops keep warning him about the moral and social vacuum that brings. This week, the most senior business interests, economists and trade union leaders in the country joined them. All argue in favour of the right to work after six months for reasons ranging from the most pragmatic to the most idealistic. You don't often see such a broad consensus in any society.
John O'Donoghue rejects their demand in the same cavalier fashion with which the Government belittled public opinion before the Nice referendum. But the difference in his rejection this time is that it misreads the argument.
The plan is to grant the right to work after six months to many of the 13,400 people, otherwise named "the backlog", living here. But the right would be withdrawn if refugee status was not granted. People would then be deported, and have to apply for work permits in the usual way. Mr O'Donoghue's response that this would undermine both the integrity of the asylum process and of the immigration process doesn't hold up.
Seven other EU countries have already introduced the right on the EU Commission's request, without threatening the integrity of their procedures. Some have imperial pasts that still impinge on their cultures, whereas Ireland can only claim a colonial one, whatever old-style definitions of sovereignty its Government enforces.
Meanwhile, the Government has made the port of Cherbourg a kind of French Rockall, a little Ireland where potential applicants are turned back before they ever reach Irish shores. If they continue to use the Dublin Convention as justification (the convention requires that asylum be sought at the first point of entry into the EU), they may beg too much neighbourliness from the rest of the EU.
Strictly speaking, Ireland could use the Dublin Convention to establish so many outposts in mainland Europe that no potential refugee ever reaches this country. And that means Ireland would not be sharing the burden fairly.
But, his officials swear, Ireland has the highest pro-rata number of refugees in Europe. Actually, it's the third highest and only on a strictly annual basis. The rest of the EU took its share for years before Ireland opened any doors, so when you measure total refugee numbers living in a country over time, Ireland comes off among the least hospitable in Europe. And one reason why the annual rate is so high compared to the Irish population is that so many people emigrated from this country over the last 150 years. Not one of them would qualify for refugee status had they been subjected to the procedures that now apply.
What would they think of an Irish sovereignty that puts doctors in prison, lawyers in lodgings, and witnesses children failing to thrive on their parents' wage of £15 a day, if they are lucky enough to be with their parents? What would they think of a "native" Government that ignores the wishes of so many of its own people?
Welcome to Ireland, Mr Prodi. Of course we don't want to keep people out!
mruane@irish-times.ie