ANOTHER 21 Roma have flown in to the country to take up residence alongside 86 fellow gypsies who have already set up camp beside a motorway.

Last night the latest arrivals were settling into their new surroundings at the Ballymun exit from the M50 motorway, as the Romanian ambassador launched a hard-hitting attack on Irish support groups.

Silvia Davidoiu accused Pavee Point and the Roma Support Group of spearheading a campaign which attempted to manipulate the Irish public with a blend of untrue declarations and distortions of fact.

The Irish Independent learned last night that the 21 extra gypsies flew in to Dublin on a flight from Bucharest on Saturday night.

The latest arrivals carried tents in their luggage and hailed a fleet of taxis to take them directly from the airport to the three makeshift camps occupied by the others for the past couple of months.

The original 86 have already been served with deportation orders and it is understood the 21 will also be served with papers by the immigration authorities.

The 86 are preparing their submissions to Justice Minister Brian Lenihan against the orders served on them by gardai on Saturday.

They have 15 days to complete their submissions and a decision on their fate will then be made by the minister.

'How can whole families living in rubbish dumps, therefore having no property or financial means, finance their flights to Ireland?'

Ambassador Davidoiu said she was deeply concerned by the allegations repeatedly made by some of those living at the roundabout and by Pavee Point and the Roma Support Group about their treatment and living conditions in Romania.

Mendacious assertions aimed at misleading the Irish public into thinking that their conditions in Romania were worse than here were used in their campaign, she said.

She confirmed that the M50 campers were not homeless in Romania and some had permanent addresses in apartment blocks.

"The claim of living in makeshift tents in a rubbish dump back in Romania is a deliberately repeated falsehood," she added.

"How can whole families living in rubbish dumps, therefore having no property or financial means, finance their flights to Ireland?" she asked.

"How much do more than 50 flights to Ireland cost?" the ambassador asked. "And how can families with no resources or property support such costs?"

Refused

She pointed out that some of the gypsies had been offered jobs back home by an Italian shoe-making factory.

The job offer had been accepted by some and refused by others.

"Yet, one of their mantras is that they are not allowed to work in Romania.

"In the region where the extended family originate, the local authorities are implementing a project aimed at putting land at the disposal of poor families to support them making a decent living," she said yesterday.

It was regrettable, she added, that some Irish groups, and even part of the mass media, were ready to embrace stereotypes about the supposed discrimination the Roma minority was suffering in Romania.

She said it was surprising that Pavee Point was launching appeals to European bodies to treat "the Roma minority problem as an European one" when it had always been tackled as an European issue by those institutions.

Accuse

Ambassador Davidoiu also claimed the M50 campers were using their circumstances - "which they got into by ignoring the Irish legislation regarding the access to the Irish labour market" - to accuse the Romanian government of discrimination.

All of the 86 served with deportation orders have already refused two offers of free flights home.

Last January, 230 Romanians arrived here in large groups and sought asylum. But their applications were quickly turned down under an EU treaty protocol.

Only a dozen out of the 230 accepted an offer of a free flight home and the rest returned to either France or Spain.