Hindsight is great for providing 20-20 vision on how to handle a crisis but it's clear from events over the past two months that lessons need to be learned by all agencies involved.

It is good, therefore, that justice minister Brian Lenihan has ordered a full review of the controversy that led to over 100 people, including small babies, living in such squalid and unhealthy conditions for so long.

Not the least of the inquiry's focus should be why it took so long before any action was initiated.

The fact that very young children were living in conditions that posed a serious risk to their health should have alerted the authorities at the highest level to the need for coordinated action from health officials, local authorities, social workers and the gardai.

The threatening behaviour of some of those living on the roundabout towards drivers passing by and to local people should also have prompted the gardai to respond more actively.

In the end, it took saturation publicity on television, radio and in the papers to jerk the authorities into the sort of coordinated action that should have taken place automatically.

As we have seen in the eventual handling of this controversy, authoritative action does not have to be inhuman but can be carried out in a courteous, sensitive manner.

A thread of poor decisions runs through this entire saga and no doubt Lenihan's review will point to a better way of dealing with immigrants from Romania and Bulgaria, whose citizens, as EU members, are allowed to travel without visas to Ireland but who were specifically excluded from being allowed to work here or claim social welfare. The decision to treat Romanians and Bulgarians differently was taken after much debate and received widespread public approval.

But there is certainly an argument that the Roma families' inability to work was a factor in causing the M50 roundabout encampment.

There are legitimate fears that some of the 6,000 Romanians who came here since last January are being forced to work illicitly in poor conditions and for wage rates that are lower than the minimum wage.

The main focus of the investigation into the Roma controversy should be on how these cases are handled at point of entry. Efficient border control is not just an immigration issue but a criminal one too.

Last week, a BBC investigation revealed that Rosslare was a favoured through-port used by Bulgarian baby smugglers. They brought babies sold for 60,000 to British and European families through the Irish port in order to hide the trail back to Bulgaria. The programme also revealed how prostitutes were smuggled into Dublin from Bulgaria.

Many people will remember the shock nine years ago when over 40 people . . . Roma Romanians again, as it happens . . . were discovered in poor conditions hidden in containers in Rosslare Port, having paid their life savings to traffickers to get them to Ireland. What has changed since then?

In Britain, prime minister Gordon Brown has just announced the establishment of a single border police to coordinate work done by revenue, customs and immigration officers. There, the unified approach is seen as a counter-terrorism measure as well as a means of efficiently enforcing immigration policy.

Ireland is demonstrably an easy target for human traffickers, as well as a conduit for largescale drugs shipments. On that basis alone, it is time we debated the need for a similar coordinated approach to policing our borders here.

Whatever the debate about our immigration policy and how we treat those coming here, no policy is workable unless it is enforced fairly at point of entry . . . with due respect and humanity to the people involved.