Sir, - The deaths of eight people in a freight container en route from Milan to Wexford brings the plight of refugees and asylum-seekers from many parts of the world sharply and tragically into focus.
It is surely a sign of acute desperation for people to allow themselves to be locked into a container and put aboard a ship bound, they hope, for somewhere that will afford them both a welcome and a chance for a better life. So desperate are they that they are prepared to pay unscrupulous gangsters large sums to be smuggled across borders.
What levels of poverty and oppression must these people be experiencing to force them to risk their lives to escape from their own countries in this way? Quite apart from extending cΘad m∅le fβilte to such unfortunate people, the Irish Government should be using whatever clout it has on the international stage to find some mechanism to compel the corrupt and brutal regimes that exist in many developing countries to show greater care for their own people. - Yours, etc.,
John O'Shea, GOAL, PO Box 19, Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin.