Two girls aged six and four years and 12 adults were found alive in a refrigerated trailer on board a lorry that arrived at Rosslare Europort on Monday (January 8). They were discovered at around 3 am when the lorry was stopped exiting the ferry which had come from Zeebrugge in Belgium.

According to an Irish police statement, before the ship reached port, a Kurdish woman in the container had made a distress call which was picked up by the UK coast guard and passed onto the Irish authorities.

Ireland’s transport minister, Eamon Ryan, who is also the Green party leader, said he was relieved that the migrants were safe. According to authorities, they had possibly spent as long as 24 hours shut inside the container at -4 degrees. They had been struggling to breathe and had cut a hole in the side of the container.

In spite of the ordeal, all 14 people were reported to be in good health. The former president of the Irish Road Haulage Association, Eugene Drennan, said it was only by chance that a "very awful situation" involving fatalities had been averted.

Most of the migrants – including the two girls – were Kurds from Iran and Iraq, with three people from Vietnam and one from Turkey.

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Migrants helped by 'professional gang'

The Rosslare port handles passengers as well as freight from Britain and Europe, with connections to France and Spain, and has become much busier since the UK left the European Union.

On Tuesday, investigators were said to be trying to find out at what point the migrants entered the container, which was loaded onto the lorry south of Paris before traveling to Belgium.

Haulier Eugene Drennan said the incident was certainly the work of a professional smuggling gang. "The truck was fully sealed… it had to be some people who knew how to manipulate the locks and seals," he told the Irish national broadcaster RTÉ. The migrants may have believed they were headed for England, Drennan said.

Ryan said every effort had to be made to avoid putting migrants' lives at risk. However, he added that eliminating smuggling was "practically impossible".

It is not the first time that migrants have been discovered stowed away in vehicles arriving in this part of Ireland. In 2019, 16 men from Iraq and Iran were found on the back of a lorry on a ferry sailing from France. In a tragic incident in 2001, police discovered 13 people in a container in Rosslare: eight of them, including four children, had suffocated.

Also read: Crossing the English Channel, or trying via Ireland: Migrants risk all to reach the UK

Humanitarian response

Irish President Michael D. Higgins said it was important to understand how people become vulnerable to being smuggled. "We really have not put enough work into listening to the stories of people … who are that desperate," the Irish Times quoted Higgins as saying. "If we are to understand migration, we must look at the last straw effects that make people borrow money and turn to human traffickers."

The 14 migrants have been taken to residential accommodation for asylum seekers (IPAS). The head of the 'Doras' migrant rights organization, John Lannon, warned that people who have been smuggled or trafficked need specialist support. Speaking on RTÉ, Lannon added: "The fact that 14 people, including children, had to hide in a refrigerated container also highlights the need for safe, legal and regulated pathways for people to reach third countries like Ireland."

The Irish prime minister, Leo Varadkar, whose government is under fire over a national shortage of housing for asylum seekers, said the migrants may choose to apply for asylum or leave voluntarily.

He promised that an effort would be made to process any asylum claims as quickly as possible, adding that Ireland’s "first response is always a humanitarian one."

With AFP

Also read: Seeking asylum in the Republic of Ireland