They arrived in court handcuffed to prison guards, and left unshackled to spend their first night in an Irish hotel.
As the 19 Moldovans left the Four Courts yesterday the relief showed on their faces. The men said they were happy not to spend a fifth night in Mountjoy prison in Dublin, where one man said he had fainted and others had started a hunger strike.
Mr Eugen Pintea (28), an economist, said: "We are not criminals. We are normal people who came here with legal visas and work permits . . . I am very happy now. I can't believe it."
The men arrived in Dublin Airport last Sunday with valid entry visas and work permits for jobs in a Kildare meat factory. Due to the BSE crisis, this company no longer had jobs, and said it had told them this in advance. The men's lawyers insisted in court they had not known this.
While the High Court heard arguments yesterday about the lawfulness of the men's detention by immigration officials, fresh applications for work permits with two firms were being processed. Nine of the men have been offered jobs with the Queally Group, food manufacturers in Naas, Co Kildare, the other 10 with Movex Packaging in Tallaght, Co Dublin.
Many of the group, aged 24 to 43, are overqualified for their packaging jobs. Seventeen of them are married and planned to send money home to their families in the small republic bordering Romania and Russia.
They include Stanislaus (28), a dentist with a wife and a young child and Anatolie (40), a butcher with two children. The other men are mostly labourers, butchers and drivers. Stanislaus and Anatolie each said they earned £15 a month in Moldova. The weekly starting rate at Queally Group is £230 before tax, said its chief executive, Mr Ciaran Murray. Mr Murray, who already employs 90 Brazilians, said the entire food processing sector had problems finding workers. "If I can help them, at the same time I can gain some employees," he said outside the court.
The men set off to Naas last night to join friends and relatives from their home country who are working there. It was their landlord and friend, Mr Berty Dunne, who helped to find the new job offers. Mr Dunne worked for 12 years in Australia. "We'll give them a good old Irish welcome tonight and provide them with a pint of Guinness," he said.