THE POLISH AMBASSADOR to Ireland has responded strongly to an article in an Irish newspaper which purported to give an account of a Polish woman’s life on the dole in Donegal.

Marcin Nawrot criticised the piece in today’s Irish Independent for its inaccuracy and said that it was ‘subjective and selective’ in how it presented the story.

The article purported to be about an account given by ‘Magda’ to a Polish newspaper about the benefits she enjoyed from the social welfare system. However in a letter to the News Editor of the paper, Ambassador Nawrot said there were a number of inaccuracies in the Irish Independent piece which could have been avoided through a proper translation or a more objective approach.

“In terms of her describing her life as “Hawaiian Massage”, at no stage in this article does she make such a statement,” writes the Ambassador.

“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. I think you can agree that this misrepresentation completely changes the tone of the article”.

He says that there were “many other inaccuracies… throughout the Irish Independent 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 cites the contribution of many Polish people to Irish society in recent years.

“The decision to remain in Ireland that so many Polish people made in the recent years is 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,” he wrote.

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“It’s impossible to imagine that this decision, sometimes a very painful one, is made on the basis of the unemployment benefit or other kinds of support granted to the jobless by the Irish State”.

The letter in full reads: