The Polish ambassador to Ireland has described an article purporting to tell the story of a Polish woman living the ‘good life’ on welfare in Donegal as “potentially inflammatory”.
Marcin Nawrot was responding to a newspaper piece published today in which a woman named as ‘Magda’ allegedly describes her life on the dole in Donegal as a “Hawaiian massage”.
The article was reportedly sourced from an article in the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza, which interviewed Poles about their experiences of living and working in Ireland.
Mr Nawrot has written to the Irish Independent to complain about the piece, claiming it to be inaccurate relative to the original article, and that it used facts presented in the Polish article "in a very selective and subjective manner".
“The subject ‘Magda’ states in the Polish article: ‘I have a big problem with being unemployed, I don’t want to live at the State’s expense and for that reason I use this assistance to allow me start up my own business’,” the ambassador writes.
“I believe that this is the sentence that best summarizes the context of the original article and it is decidedly unfortunate that it has been omitted in your article.”
He says that “at no stage” in the original article does the woman named as ‘Magda’ make such a statement about her life being a ‘Hawaiian massage’.
“What she actually says is that she has completed a Fás course in Hawaiian massage and that she’s planning to open a massage business next year,” Mr Nawrot writes.
“I think you can agree that this misrepresentation completely changes the tone of the article.”
Nor had the woman, as claimed, described the place where she lives as ‘a s***hole’.
“In fact she loves it and is very passionate about it.” She had merely referred to other people saying that, the ambassador says.
There were “many other” inaccuracies of that type throughout the article, which “could have been easily avoided if only the Polish article had been translated correctly or its content presented in a more objective manner”.
The ambassador’s letter continues: “I fully understand how potentially damaging this article might be to the good reputation that the Polish community has amongst Irish society and I ask your readers not to judge us on the basis of this solitary article.
“You have managed to get to know us well in recent years and you know our work ethic and our system of values which, I’m sorry to say, is inaccurately presented in this article...”
Mr Nawrot says the decision to remain in Ireland that so many Polish people have made in recent years was “a decision to make a valuable contribution to the Irish state by living and working here, integrating with the Irish society and being a part of it all in good times and bad”.
“It’s impossible to imagine that this decision, sometimes a very painful one, is made on the basis of the level of unemployment benefit or other kinds of support granted to the jobless by the Irish State”
Gazeta Wyborcza features editor Mariusz Szczygiel said the article ran as part of a package presenting both the positive and negative sides of the Polish emigrant experience around Europe.
"Since Poles living in Ireland claim all those benefits legally, I see no problem with that," he told The Irish Times. "Our feature journalists like to go 'against the stream'. The idea was to have one 'profanum piece'."
The article provoked a storm of critical remarks on Gazeta Wyborcza's website.
"That's a depraved article, some people need to work hard for the laziness of the persons described,” wrote one reader.
Another wrote: "No wonder that eurozone states have such problems, welfare payments like that are an extravagance.”
A Polish woman living in Ireland wrote: "I cannot read the article because I am so mad: I have been living for a few years in Ireland. Myself and my husband both work and have a child but almost never see each other as we take turns working and caring on the baby. We pay high taxes so people like that can have a nice living.”
Neither the Polish journalist nor “Magda” was available for comment