THEY call it “Samba City”, a place where hundreds of smiling Brazilians dance in the streets and play soccer with Ronaldo-like skill to the latin beat of the local disco.

Were it not for Mrs Quinn’s Charity Shop in the high street, the fights outside the Abrakedabra chip shop and the occasional tractor parked outside Dicey Reilly’s pub, Erico José might delude himself into thinking that he was somewhere back home.

But this is not Copacabana Beach or even Senhor José’s home city of Anapolis, in the central Brazilian state of Goias.

He is living in Gort, Co Galway, a rain-soaked backwater on Ireland’s west coast whose only real claim to fame until recently was that an ancient Celtic king once held a drunken orgy there for 200 poets that lasted “a year, a quarter and a month”.

Twelve centuries later, the town is entertaining a different group of outsiders, and with so much success that observers believe that it could become a model for 21st-century Ireland.

Senhor José, 36, a supervisor at the local slaughterhouse, was one of the first Brazilians to come here. When he left Anapolis he was a lean young athelete with a sun-kissed complexion and a bewitching ability on the football pitch. Several thousand pints of Guinness later, he pats his belly as he salutes Ireland’s contribution to his once-perfect physique.

“The belly is because of the Guinness,” he laughs. “I like it very much. I can drink six pints, but my friends take two hours to drink just one.” Most of his fellow countrymen have yet to develop Erico’s taste for stout, but this is the only complaint that locals have about them.

There are now more than 600 Brazilians there, a quarter of the town’s population — an amazing statistic given rural Ireland’s reputation for ethnic intolerance.

It means that Gort is now arguably the most multicultural town in the Irish Republic, where ethnic minorities still account for just 1.5 per cent of the 4 million population.

Even in the mildest of weather the Brazilians can be seen huddling together in groups, wearing woolly hats and brightly coloured Puffa jackets.

The men of Gort were initially suspicious of their new neighbours, and the women afraid that their husbands would be entranced by exotic South American beauties. But after the initial wariness, the Irish were won over — especially after the Brazilians held their own impromptu carnival and danced for 12 hours in the town square.

It all started four years ago when Sean Duffy, the owner of the meat plant, became so fed up with local workers arriving drunk on a Monday morning that he toured a series of factories in Brazil and brought back a handful of slaughtermen and butchers.

The prospect of paid work, comfortable housing and a safe environment for families meant that the men were soon followed by their wives and at least some of their children. “It’s very difficult to live in Brazil and to have a job,” says Senhor José, who makes €7 (£4.90) an hour, the minimum wage in Ireland. “It is good money here. I have to work for two months in Brazil for the money in one week in Ireland.”

Ezequias Santos, 40, a slaughterman at the factory, came to Gort two years ago, following in the footsteps of some friends. He has since been joined by his brother and 17-year-old daughter.

Rosemberg Oliveira, 24, came to Gort in November 2002 after struggling to make a living in Anapolis. He now works as a spray painter and has a nine-month-old baby, Jack, with a 21-year-old local girl. They share a two-bedroom flat with Senhor Oliveira’s mother, who works as a chambermaid in the town’s hotel.

“Here you can make money fast, and maybe one day I will go back to my country and buy the things I never had,” Senhor Oliveira says.

About 45 Brazilians, most from Anapolis, work at Duffy’s Slaughtering Plant, while others work in the hotel, the launderette, shops across town, or as plasterers, builders and cleaners. Some commute to work in Limerick 40 miles away, while others have found jobs in nearby Galway city.

About 30 Brazilian children attend the local Convent of Mercy Primary School, and a further 17 are at the town’s secondary school, where teachers have been given a course in basic Portuguese.

At Centra, the supermarket, the signs are in Portuguese as well as English, while an entire corner of Mary Teresa Walsh’s fruit and vegetable shop has been set aside for Brazilian food.

Paul O’Halloran, manager of the leisure centre, said: “You get the odd bit of racism, but most people treat them like anybody else.

“They’re like the Paddy when we went to America and England all those years ago.”

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