Several school principals in Dublin's inner-city have been contacted by the Garda National Immigration Bureau (GNIB) in the last six months and told that some of their students will have to cease attending immediately, regardless of what stage they are at in their education. The Sunday Tribune has learned of two students who have had to return to their homes in Mauritius, while several other students have transferred to private schools.

"It is a devastating situation for the students involved who are being told without any notice that they must leave the school, " said Gerry Cullen, principal of Mount Carmel Secondary School in Dublin.

Three Mauritian students at Mount Carmel were informed last May that they would have to leave immediately, even though one student was due to sit her Junior Certificate the following month. When the school appealed, she was allowed to sit her exams, but since then two of the students have returned home, while another has moved to a fee-paying school.

"All schools receive funding from the Department of Education, including fee-paying ones, and yet these students are being told that because their parents are supposedly not contributing to the state, they are not entitled to a free education, " said Ken Duggan of CBS Westland Row, who is fighting to retain a secondyear student who has been told he must leave the school.

A spokeswoman for the Department of Education said under the Equal Status Act, all students are admitted to schools irrespective of their status. A spokeswoman for the Department of Justice said where non-EU adults come here as students, their dependants must not be a cost to the state. "Clearly, enrolling a child in a state school would contravene this principle, " she said.

Fine Gael education spokesman Brian Hayes told the Sunday Tribune he would be raising the issue with the Minister for Justice.

"This is a pretty heartless position, where students are being removed from their school environment and in some cases their families, " he said. "There needs to be a unit within the Department of Education which is dedicated to the whole issue of integration policy."