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Polish Ambassador furious over article claiming Polish woman is Irish welfare queen

Poles react with fury to article claiming woman sponges off Irish state

By
PATRICK COUNIHAN,
IrishCentral Staff Writer
Published Thursday, February 2, 2012, 7:58 AM
Updated Thursday, February 2, 2012, 10:37 AM

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Queue outside social welfare office in Dublin
Queue outside social welfare office in Dublin
Photo by Google Images


A diplomatic row is brewing after reports that a Polish social welfare recipient quit her job to scrounge off the Irish state were described as inaccurate by the country’s ambassador.

The original article, in the Irish Independent, claimed that a Polish immigrant called Magda lived near the beach in Donegal and said that working for the minimum wage ‘made no sense’. The article has since been removed from the newspapers website.

The article, translated from a Polish newspaper feature, also claimed that Magda spent her days walking the beach, surfing, chatting to locals and taking a course in Hawaiian massage.
Now one of Poland’s leading newspapers and the country’s ambassador to Ireland have claimed that the article was badly translated.

The country’s ambassador to Ireland Marcin Nawrot said the original article had been inaccurately translated and cited potential damage to the reputation of Poles living in Ireland, according to the Irish Times.

“I can assure you that people like Magda constitute a very small minority of Poles in Ireland, and are in no way representative of the entire Irish-based Polish community,” he said.

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“Magda did not describe Donegal in the article as a s...hole, as had been reported. Magda described her life on unemployment benefit as less stressful than before, but expressed unhappiness about not working for a living.”

The ambassador claimed that the original article published in Poland actually quoted her as saying: “I don’t want to live at the Government’s cost, which is why I treat this help as an opportunity to start my own business. For the last five years I was paying my taxes here, so I’ve earned my benefits.”

‘Magda’ was quoted as saying she receives an allowance of €188 per week plus €59 for her flat in Donegal and €20 for fuel – giving her a total of €267. (about 350 dollars) This is €67 more than she was earning as a waitress in a local hotel and more than she might hope to earn from the social welfare system in Poland.

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55 Comments

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MichaelMcGrath | Feb 14, 2012, 11:20 PM EST
In reverie of Magda Yes, of course, the Polish enjoy a much higher level of culture and education than the Bog Irish. Chopin immediately springs to mind when I think reverently of Poland. Oh and Krakow, stately city that bore a Pope no less , how my mind soars, how my very spirit thrills to cast off dirty Dublin for that veritable Paradise on Earth. What would Ireland do without Polish genius, where would Ireland be, oh gorgeous Magda I leap to thy defence, let me cast my Donegal Tweed beneath thy pretty little feet, thou wert Cinderella, only the silver slipper fitteth thee , and no wretched Caitlin of the big feet and awkward gait. Oh how I swoon at the very thought of conversational ecstacy with my darling Warsaw set, Bloomsbury never attained such height of intellectual pleasure, how almost ejaculatory the thought , oh Poland, my awesome Poland thou hast rescued me so, thou hast delivered me from all the ennui of the Irish, that crude Jackeen accent – your lovely Silesian accent , Magda, speak that I quiver, and those eyes, those steel pale Polish eyes that shine ecstatic with delight as we collect in Bundoran Post Office every Wednesday and you nobly despatch all you can home to Krakow, lovely Krakow, we stroll along the beach, oh Magda , and there are millions more like you , the New Irish, yes, a poet dreamt that , it had to be, a Filidh of Dun na nGall

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hibernia247 | Feb 06, 2012, 05:25 PM EST
i agree georgedillon. thank you

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hibernia247 | Feb 06, 2012, 05:24 PM EST
i agree georgedillon

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seanomelb | Feb 06, 2012, 05:20 PM EST
Hibernia is leaving the building I'll give George 2 cents to join him.

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GeorgeDillon | Feb 06, 2012, 03:33 PM EST
Hibernia: You are, like many Irish people, an articulate and intelligent opponent of the Mass Settlement of your homeland by foreigners. I urge you to seek opportunities for expressing your views within Ireland. Engaging in exchanges with the Fianna Fail jerks on this site --posters such as curdexter, curvara and curpeter--is a waste of time. I do it because I like to give racists a virtual kick in the face, but you can find better avenues to express yourself in Ireland.

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GeorgeDillon | Feb 06, 2012, 03:33 PM EST
Hibernia: You are, like many Irish people, an articulate and intelligent opponent of the Mass Settlement of your homeland by foreigners. I urge you to seek opportunities for expressing your views within Ireland. Engaging in exchanges with the Fianna Fail jerks on this site --posters such as curdexter, curvara and curpeter--is a waste of time. I do it because I like to give racists a virtual kick in the face, but you can find better avenues to express yourself in Ireland.

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eiriamach | Feb 06, 2012, 07:11 AM EST
Does anyone know how much of this issue is traditional immigration, and how much is refugees and asylum seekers? Not all new arrivals are immigrants in the usual sense. I remember reading years ago that Ireland had taken in more Kosovo refugees proportionally to its population than any other EU member state. Doesn't Ireland have resettlement agreements with the UN and commitments to the EU, which kicks in €4,000 assistance to accommodate each refugee? They come from war-torn countries like Libya, African famine regions, and economically ravaged areas with political turmoil in Eastern Europe. Isn't there a humanitarian dimension to this issue?

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hibernia247 | Feb 05, 2012, 05:29 PM EST
Time to leave this forum as obviously some people dont realise what the vast majority of Irish people think about immigration. Disaster for Ireland

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hibernia247 | Feb 05, 2012, 05:22 PM EST
There were tonnes of jobs alright but the Irish didn't get them because the Polish undercut the wage of every Irish worker. The company I work for refuse me a pay increase in 2007 and told me that there were plenty of Polish outside queing willing to take my job. This is what happened. Most of the Irish couldnt get a job since. I am sick of people saying oh they are great workers. They were on such low rates that they had to work long hours. They still did not earn enough to pay tax so there input into revenue was minimal. By the way this thing about we are all EU - have all the EU members opened their doors like Ireland ? ? ? ? ?

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seanomelb | Feb 05, 2012, 05:03 PM EST
God Ciara!! do you not get bored bantering with this racist prat.

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ciaradexy | Feb 05, 2012, 02:30 PM EST
Or maybe youre right George, maybe it is Ireland for giving an irish passport to the relative of an Irish person who has never contributed a thing to Ireland.

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ciaradexy | Feb 05, 2012, 02:26 PM EST
Probably the US for taking in your immigrant relatives George.

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GeorgeDillon | Feb 05, 2012, 02:12 PM EST
Update on this story, from Sunday's Irish newspapers. The Polish welfare parasite "Magda" was last seen at Dublin Airport boarding a plane for a North African beach resort on Saturday. Great country is Ireland--It goes around the world with the begging cap in hand, but it sends foreign migrants wbho haven't worked for the past 18 months on a sun vacation to break the mid-winter gloom. Someone please tell me: Are the current Irish the stupidest people on the face of the earth? If not, which nation is dumber?

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ciaradexy | Feb 05, 2012, 11:21 AM EST
Hibernia, you said people get gym vouchers. This is nonsense. We are part of the EU so the borders are open! We will not be leaving the EU anytime soon and we have no control over who comes here from Europe! When we signed up to EU membership that was the stipulation! We had 150,000 irish on the dole during the boom. These were on the dole by choice. There were tonnes of jobs and yet some irish didnt want to do them so the Eastern Europeans got them as did foreign students who came here to learn English. Should we also give the unemployed irish who have never worked a day in their lives 3 months for find work? (Id say yes to be honest with you). If a Polish person works here for a few years and loses their job why shouldnt they get welfare if they have paid tax and PRSI over an irish person who may not have worked a day in their life? Some irish didnt work when there were plenty of jobs and the migrants did, thats a fact!

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hibernia247 | Feb 05, 2012, 09:57 AM EST
Georgedilon apologies for the 12% figure - that was meant to be the amount of Polish - I agree the overall immigrant percentage is appros 18-19%. As for ciaradexy - If you read my post, I did not state gym membership. The comparison to the unemployment rate in the 1980's is Ridiculous. How to solve. First stop the mass eastern european influx. Those tha are here umemployed - give them 3 months to find work, if they dont send them home. This will bring our unemployment numbers down to approx 300,000. Now take every other immigrant working here out of the equation. That would free up the jobs for the Irish. Our rate would now be down to approx 50,000. In the 1980's the figures were for Irish unemployed as we did not have mass immigration. So mass immigration is part of the problem caused by greedy developers and banks. I think we need another rising

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