It seems a startling statistic - an average of three Poles a week die in this State. Ruadhán Mac Cormaic reports on how the Polish community is coping.
'Three a week? I didn't think it was such a high number." The chaplain to Dublin's Polish community, Fr Jaroslaw Maszkiewicz, considers the statistic. "But there are many of us. It's sad, but it's normal."
Each week an average of three Polish people living in Ireland are reported dead. With up to 110,000 living in the State, this is roughly in line with general trends, but the dimensions of the bleak ordeal it involves for the bereaved are disproportionately wide.
That much was glimpsed this week when workmates and friends of four Polish men killed in a car crash in Co Cork on Good Friday had to begin fundraising to help pay for the cost of transporting their bodies to Poland for burial, the estimated €2,000 required for repatriation far exceeding their families' means. According to the Polish embassy in Dublin, the case gave public airing to a recurring problem.
"Normally it would be two or maybe three deaths a week, but it's especially high since the beginning of this year," says Nicola Sekowska from its consular section. "Maybe because of the winter, people are a bit more depressed. There are also more Polish cars on the road. All this increases the numbers."
When one of its citizens dies, the embassy involves itself in preparing documents and sifting through myriad legal forms that repatriation requires. It enlists the expertise of an undertaker, who treats the body for travel and oversees the logistics. The embassy's consul must then identify the body, witness the sealing of the coffin and sign the papers allowing the remains to travel. Depending on the circumstances, it can cost more than €3,000 to repatriate a body from Ireland to Poland.
"Maybe for an Irish person, €3,000 or €4,000 to have a body transported, it's not a huge amount of money. But if you calculate it in Polish zlotys, it's huge. It could be the amount of money that you would earn annually," says Sekowska. "The simple fact that somebody is working here means that they haven't found employment in Poland. It also means that their family is poor enough."
How do they pay? The embassy says it can't afford to cover costs, but the Health Service Executive (HSE) has been known to help, as it did last Wednesday when it agreed to make up the shortfall needed by friends of the crash victims in Co Cork. In other cases, the employer of the deceased might offer to help, the St Vincent de Paul may intervene, or friends and acquaintances will assemble a fund.
Repatriation arrangements can be adapted, too. Usually, a bereaved Polish family instructs a Polish funeral director to handle the task, with some companies specialising in retrieving bodies from abroad. Marius Konczy, who works for the Warsaw-based funeral service Bongo, says his business here has surged in recent years, bringing him to Ireland several times in busy months. Few Polish people opt for the remains of their loved ones to be flown home, preferring the cheaper overland option, or, for cost reasons, cremation. Most pay in instalments.
"If it's possible, we can do two cases at the same time," says Konczy. "It's about half price if there are two bodies. Sometimes we can tell the family, there is the opportunity we will get another case if you wait, then the price will be lower. But the families don't always want to wait one or two weeks." Allowing for the two-day drive to Ireland, Konczy says, a typical round-trip to collect a body takes about a week, though the delay is longer if the deceased was murdered or died on the road.
Since Poland's accession to the European Union in May 2004, Bongo's international business has climbed exponentially, and competition for the Irish and British orders in particular is intense, partly because of the large Polish population in these countries, but also because of the ease with which they can carry out the work.
"In my opinion, Britain and Ireland are the best countries to do this type of job. It's very easy for us. When you get there, there are no problems with coroners, with hospital staff. For example, if you try to collect a body in Madrid, you have to pay the police . . . The same in Italy. There is no problem collecting bodies from Ireland."
Of the 10 Latvians who die in Ireland in a typical year - most in road crashes, by suicide or illness - the majority are repatriated by aircraft.
Aer Lingus carries human remains between Dublin, Cork and Shannon airports and London Heathrow for a flat fee of €350. Other airlines calculate the cost by weighing the coffin. In death as in life, the cheapest - if least convenient - option is Ryanair, which carries the deceased for free, but only on one route: London Stansted-Knock.
"It's all to do with the size of the planes," says one funeral director. "Effectively, once you're travelling like that, you're cargo. Some planes just aren't able to take the coffins."
Irish undertakers, too, have noticed a brisk increase in the number of repatriation orders they take. "In the last five years it has certainly increased enormously," says Orla Nolan of the Irish Association of Funeral Directors.
She says that sometimes the deceased would be transported in a coffin that is fairly ordinary and then be transferred to a better one at the other end. A lot of people want to bring the body of their loved one home and they don't want cremation. "Maybe their religion doesn't allow it, or it's just too upsetting for them. A lot of people are pragmatic and say, let's cremate them and bring the ashes home, because it's cheaper," she adds. A few elect to have their loved one buried in Ireland.
It is Thursday evening, and the daily Polish Mass has just ended at St Michan's Church on Halston Street in Dublin. The congregation of a dozen has filed out and Fr Maszkiewicz is preparing to lock up for the night. Two families have come to him in recent months after a loved one died in the city, he recalls; the first, a man in his 40s, suffered a stroke, while the second - a younger man - fell from a balcony. One was cremated, the other repatriated to Poland with help from the community. The additional burden of cost compounded the tragedy, he agrees. "But really, everyone who dies, especially when not in the normal way, it's tragic for the family."