From what I saw in the euros there’s every chance of a few murphski’s being born in Poznan and sopot

Here is the dad from the photo in th article. He’s also starred on the web to promote a Swedish discount card, furnace safety, a German doctor’s clinical practice, a Portugese dentist and pro-family Christian Evangelical sites:
http://hardworkingtoryfamily.tumblr.com/

I imagine he thought by showing random shots of Irish people would balance out that there is a 70% chance that he/she could’ve been Polish.. I’m not racist nor do I have a problem with any nationality in my country, but I don’t believe they invest here from what I understand. It’s earned and sent back to Poland.
I await the red thumbs but I’m just speaking what seems to be the truth.

70% chance a random photo from Ireland will be of a Polish person? If I take 100 photos of random people in Ireland, 70 of those people are likely to be Polish? Really?

And is there any reason why they shouldn’t be allowed to spend their own hard earned money how they wish? Who else should need to get approval on how they spend their money? Everyone? Only the Poles? All non-Irish? Do we need to include nurses, teachers, gardaí, the unemployed.. after all it’s our money they get paid.

Nonsense Boy Russell. I know of several Polish families who have purchased a house here in Ireland with the intention of staying in this country. I know of several more who have invested in local businesses together with Irish partners. Sure, many do send money back to Poland, but just in the same way that many Irish send money home from the US, UK, Australia, etc.

What they earn us their own money indeed. Your right!
The guard, the nurse, the doctor, the soldier etc., pays their dues.
I’m just speaking from what I hear by my Polish colleagues who work ‘hard’ just like me, when they say how they send their wages home to their family and depend on other incomes to see them through.. I then wonder, what are their other incomes??
Now I’m no bloody Eddie Hobbs (Thankfully) but I think if they spent their safe incomes here, our economy wouldn’t be still picking up the pieces!
There’s a lot of them that don’t work here too ya know!?

@Boy Russell: I live and work in Poland and I send far more money than I would like to back to Ireland to pay off my loan. Like Irish people did for generations, I’m sending money home, albeit for a different reason than people did before.

It’s my money. I earned it. I’ll send it where I like. I’ll flush it down the toilet if I like. Buy an acre of land on the moon from some nutcase on eBay if I like.

Likewise, Polish people in Ireland can do whatever the hell they want with their money. I know plenty of them over there, and the most they would send home is a present at Christmas and birthdays, same as any Irish aunt or uncle did for us when they were living in England or America. Granted I don’t know every Polish person in Ireland, but the days of most of them living 15 to a house to save money to send home are long gone. For most of those that are left, Ireland is home so why would they bother sending anything back to a country they may never live in again.

Your name must be horrendous for them to make out I bet?
Look, how about I have my opinion, and you have yours eh?
Also, just a question? How do you know that they’re not living ten to one in a house, or even perhaps three to one, whatever? That’s not what’s been debated here. What is however, is this/my country been violated… And yes, our own are doing it too. I bloody melt inside sometimes.
And as a passionate man, I liked your comment As I felt your bite. There was blood in that one.
Stay safe in Poland.

Boy Russell. I think by other incomes they might mean the wife’s part time cleaning job or the husbands part time dishwashing job. You say your not being racist, but there is an undercurrent in your comments that just smacks of it. Buying food, petrol, clothes, electronics in Irish stores not to mention paying income tax, rent, and insurance IS investing in Ireland. What little they have left over is theirs to do with as they wish. When the tiger was roaring I seem to recall the sound cash registers in New York and Boston ringing loudly to the tune of Irish euros; Timeshares in Bulgaria or wherever being bought by recently affluent Irish people and God forbid you would would have taken a holiday in your own country, (I dont mean you personally). Would you say the same about a German or a Dutch person I wonder?

@adrian Quinn – I’d say the same about an Irish person, let alone anyone else.
There are good Polish people here. Solid hard workers. And indeed citizens of other nationalities too.
My initial point/comment is been trounced upon, so I’ll pull in the reigns with the fear of been seen as a racist.
Us the Irish have learned to see the racist card quite quickly because we suffered it long enough.
We were just thick paddies then to people.. I fear we are been seen as that once more. Green fools in the words of Patrick Kavanagh.
Yes, we’re green, but lets not act the cabbage anymore.
This comment ends my opinion in here. If i’m not understood at this stage in places and been branded a racist then lets just carry on with yesterday.
Sláinte.

Boy Russell. Everybody has an opinion like you said, but your comments sound like you simply want a reaction? Is that what you want? People can red thumbs me if they choose to but you also sound racist..

@stephen brown – I actually refuse to take you seriously. Apologies in advance.

If you can’t apologise for yourself Boy Russell then don’t apologise for me. If your racist you can’t help it. It’s not your fault. It must be your upbringing. So I suppose you should apologise for your parents. I’m friends with quite a few from the polish community and I find they are proud working nation. You might say the same but most can read between the lines in your comments.

@Stephen brown – Well seeing that you suffer with bouts of classism, we are all a bunch of hypocrites together.. So again, I refuse to take you serious. But I’ll put my manners (thought to me by proud parents) away and Not apologise in advance this time.. Jog on..

Why is it that whenever you hear “I’m not racist but…” it is invariably followed by a stream of racist sentiment?

People who point out that we accepted more immigrants than we could provide long-term employment for are immediately dismissed as being racist but the fact is that immigration was one of the main causes of the country’s economic collapse.

Care to elaborate on that Seamus?
Only I thought it had more to do with reckless bank lending and government spending based mainly on property-related taxes…

Sure…we were recklessly borrowing money to build new houses for all the immigrants that we invited over. Almost all the new jobs created between 2004-8 were in construction, our economy would have been flatlining if if it wasn’t for all the money we were borrowing, yet we were told that it was growing so fast it would collapse if it wasn’t for immigration.

As late as 2007 Sean Dunne said the property sector would remain bouyant because so many immigrants were coming over. Nobody seemed to ask at the time what all the Polish other Eastern European builders would do when the property bubble burst, but then people who said that it would were told to commit suicide by Bertie Ahern.

I’m not against immigration. Immigrants can benefit society but there simply wasn’t a need for 400,000 new citizens in 2004 and I don’t know why people cling to the delusion that there was.

Or at least post everyone comments.Maybe yer girlfriend or boy friend polish,and u feel u have to fly the flag.However there is two sides to every story.

Bang on John S. The fact the media primarily focused on the origin of the photo is symptomatic of their unwillingness to tackle the pros and cons of the pressing issues at hand: low fertility rates, ageing population, extending the retirement age to 67, emigration, extending maternity leave, tax reliefs for bigger families.

The fact this article highlights the Irish connection is merely to give some contextual introduction so as to inform the reader of these latter issues. They may well be of major concern to many Poles who we Irish have come to know or work with over the past decade or so.

For example, I wonder if a Polish woman who is with an Irish or Polish bloke, living in Ireland and having problems having kids, starts IVF treatment in Poland and then moves to Ireland, whether she will be eligible to get compensated by the Polish state for the otherwise very expensive private IVF treatment in Ireland/Poland. I guess once she pays ZUS she’ll get it, whether she is resident or not?

Taking our jobs our woman and NOW our pictures!!!Damn immigants

just say cheese

Not really. How would you feel if we had a “Year of Irish Culture” and displayed imagery of Bavarian beer maidens or Australian Aboriginal musicians?

I have seen a number of comments inferring on here by Irish with inferior complexes (there are a lot with this) about how ugly Irish women are and that we “benefit” from ex: Poles. I’ve also seen a number of non-Irish on Irish websites saying the Irish are “ugly”.

Is having “dark hair” extremely uncommon amongst Poles or something?

But you ARE Kev.

Doesn’t make you a nasty person. Some of my best friends are ugly fenceposts.

I like to think not Damien but then again I could just be in denial like so many are. But being that I am half-Irish and the rest of my ancestry originates from the Middle East/Asia the Irish in me isn’t very apparent to most onlookers anyway. My parents have been confused for other nationalities when there is no connection what-so-ever. So I find these stereotypes of how an Irish or whatever person is suppose to look ridiculous.

Lol us Irish are ugly though! That’s a fact not just an opinion. We don’t mind.

you’re pretty Karolyn, so it can’t be fact!

Same as that, kevin. I think some passing lascar climbed our family tree and passed round the banana at some stage…I was often asked what country I was from as a kid. If the sun broke the clouds in Janaury, Iturned Moroccan and they thought I was Philo’s bro.

But then I grew into the ravishing redhead you behold.

Lol

I hear this a lot…it seems to me that nearly all the new jobs created in our economy between 2004-08 were in construction or in the services associated with construction, all of which was being paid for with borrowed money.

It seems that the main effect of the massive immigration we had in those years is that we have much higher unemployment, massive debts and hundreds of thousands of empty houses.

I don’t blame Polish people for coming over here…if there was somewhere I could get paid four times as much for doing the same work I’d go there as well.

I think we were way too eager to become a net-immigration society because of our history and too eager to believe that our economy was booming when we were really in the same sort of credit bubble as Greece and Portugal.

We’re paying the price for that hubris now and will be for a long time to come.

If it will even happen.

The problem presented is how to maintain services as the average age of the populace increases. More retired people relative to those of working age. Are onerous taxes placed on those working to provide services for the retired. Thus disincentivising work. Or are services more acutely rationed.

‘Scuse me…dat wus me gettin in tutch with me inner fizzy-cyst.

There is a difference between HBSC and HSBC.