The Polish woman branded a welfare tourist by a leading Irish newspaper has hit back at the allegations and come out fighting.

The woman made her response on radio after the Polish ambassador Marcin Nawrot had leapt to her defence.

Magda – not her real name – was incensed when the article published in the Irish Independent claimed she was happy to give up a minimum wage job on Donegal and sponge off the state.
Ambassador Nawrot then claimed that the article, originally published in a Polish newspaper, had been badly translated and was damaging to relations between Ireland and Poland.

Now the woman has revealed her ‘shock’ at the article and claimed the allegation is ‘completely not true’.

The Irish Independent article was translated from a story in Poland’s Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper which reported on Poles struggling to find work in Ireland.

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The story quoted Magda as saying working for the minimum wage made no sense and that life in Donegal was ‘a Hawaiian massage’.

She has now confirmed that she said that she had done a government sponsored course in Hawaiian massage.

“Things were added and changed in the article,” she said on national radio. “People who know me would know straight away that it was not me.

“At first I was completely shocked. You don’t know what to think.

“How is it possible for anybody to publish something that is just not true, completely not true and it’s not just misinterpretation, you know, or mistranslation - it’s just a completely different story?”

A trained nanny who has lived in Ireland for six years, Magda described how she had worked in the hospitality industry but jobs are now scarce.

She has been on the dole for 18 months but hopes to have a massage therapy practice up and running by Easter after the State sponsored course.

“I came for holidays, and I so fell in love with Ireland, with the place,” she said.