There are some 500 Brazilians, more than 10 per cent of the population of Roscommon, and they have brought samba and colour to the town, writes Chris Dooley, Industry and Employment Correspondent
It is Friday night in Roscommon and Club 3 is pulsating to the sounds of samba. Business at the bar is less than brisk but the dance floor is crowded with couples moving in perfect rhythm to the strains of favourite acts like Raca Negra and Zeze di Camargo.
The night concludes with an emotional, full-voiced rendition of the Brazilian national anthem.
The second "Brazil night" at the club has been a success and everyone present, including the dee-jay and organiser of the event, Father Kevin Keenan, is immediately looking forward to the next one.
Tickets will again be in demand. The 500-odd foreign nationals living in Roscommon town - more than 10 per cent of the population - include Poles, Lithuanians, Estonians, Russians, Filipinos and others, but the vast majority are Brazilian.
They work in a variety of jobs including mushroom farms, hotels, shops and meat plants, such as the Kepak factory in Athleague, which has 60 Brazilians and 15 Polish workers among its staff of 170.
Kepak began recruiting foreign workers four years ago when, the company says, it encountered a serious shortage of Irish labour.
Brazilian employees, accustomed to working in meat factories five times as big as those in Ireland for less than a quarter of the pay, are in ready supply.
Most are married men who come alone and send spare earnings home to their families. Typically, they hope to return to Brazil after several years to build a new home or start a business.
Like many of his colleagues in the Athleague factory, Marildo Rodrigues (39), moved to Ireland after the closure of a large meat plant in Anapolis in western Brazil.
He came to Roscommon 10 months ago and will pay his first visit home to his wife and two sons, aged 13 and nine, in two months' time. He sends his family 80 per cent of his earnings, which enabled them to buy a car recently. "In another two years I hope to have saved enough to return home and build a house," he says.
Antonio Miguel Alves, who works in the boning hall, is separated and has three daughters in Brazil, aged from five to 11. As a skilled boner, he was paid €200 a month in Brazil, a sixth of what he earns in Ireland. But does he like it here? "The people are very polite but I don't like the food or the weather. If it wasn't for the job I would leave. There's no point in lying about it."
Kepak management says the Brazilians are exceptionally hard workers who are prepared to put in longer hours than their Irish colleagues. "They work every hour God gives," says Brendan McDonagh, a director of the company. "With the Irish people, they'd be out the gate [at the end of their shift], but with these foreigners you really have to run them out the gate at times."
Even with the downturn in the economy, it will be necessary to continue recruiting workers from abroad, the company insists. Irish workers, it claims, are no longer available for the highly demanding physical labour of the meat line or the boning hall.
"Irish people don't want to to that work now," Mr McDonagh says. "Guys don't want to be slitting animals' throats and pulling out bellies."
Brazilians, stresses the factory manager, Michael Geoghegan, are paid the same rates as Irish workers, taking home a basic €420 to €440 a week, not counting overtime. They live in rented houses with co-workers from Brazil. Kepak sources the accommodation but workers pay their own rent.
Most of the Brazilians employed by the company do not speak English, even after long periods in Ireland, so Kepak has three full-time Brazilian interpreters on its staff.
One of them, Rosackhy de Castro, says the language barrier is one of the biggest difficulties for her compatriots.
"Some of them depend on you for everything. They ask you to write down the name of something they have to buy in a shop, for example. Or they might phone from the shop asking for help."
The older workers, in particular, find it difficult to adapt. "You get used to the weather. But I've known some who have been here for four-and-a-half years and they still can't communicate with people, and I know that they find that very frustrating."
Moves are afoot, however, to help the Brazilians and other foreign nationals to integrate into the community. A working committee of local development, business and local authority interests, as well as foreign nationals themselves, is to be set up to promote cross-cultural initiatives.
Patsy Daly, manager of the Mid-South Roscommon Rural Development Company, which is involved in the initiative, says foreign nationals can contribute much to the local community if given the chance.
"They bring new ideas and new ways of doing things, but unless we reach out to them we cannot expect them to reach out to us."
Micheál Curley, president of Roscommon Chamber of Commerce, says it will support any initiative to help non-nationals become more involved in the community.
"They bring an additional dimension and if we didn't have them we might well have a labour shortage. They are well regarded locally and are seen as industrious people."