When I was a young lad, we were always complaining that the guys from the Naval Base in Haulbowline were coming to Cobh and taking all our girls. They were worse than pirates.
Many of them weren’t even from Cork. They came from far flung places like Wexford and Clare and some of them were even Dubs. Many of them eventually ended up getting married and settling in the town and we were forced to grant them asylum. Over time, we learned to live with it.
I recently heard some people complaining about foreigners coming over here and taking all our jobs. They were moaning about how these people will chance their arm at anything while they can’t even speak English. Sounded like the Navy was up to its old tricks again, but it wasn’t that. They were talking about the Polish community.
I think that’s unfair, and I want to set the record straight. I have met a lot of Polish people over the last ten or twelve years and my experience has been very positive. I think they are a tremendous asset to our county and I’ll tell you why.
I was in PC World looking for a laptop computer. My knowledge of electronics is fairly limited so I was relying on help from the assistants. I was lucky enough to meet a guy called Pawel, pronounced Pavel I think. As the name suggests, he is from Poland, and he has great command of the English language and he knows his way around a computer.
He told me all about tetra bites, megatrons, Inspiron thingy’s and milky bars and a whole bunch of stuff that went straight over my head. Once he realised what kind of an idiot he was dealing with, he began using baby talk and then he started making sense to me. He was a very good humoured, knowledgeable guy who went out of his way to help me. I followed his advice and everything he told has turned out to be right.
On another occasion, myself and my wife called into in our local bank to check on how our millions were doing. We were dealing with a girl who is very pleasant with a smiley face and she is extremely efficient. Her name is Romana and I asked her about the name. I had heard of Ramona, but I had never heard of Romana and I thought that maybe it was a misprint on her name tag.
She explained that her name is Polish and that she has been living in Cork for the last ten years. I was surprised to hear that because to me, she had a local accent. That shouldn’t have surprised me but it did.
Then I thought of a Polish family who rented our house a few years ago while we were trying to sell it. They were a married couple with a few children and they stayed there for a couple of years. They were great tenants and we never had an ounce of trouble from them. When they left, the house was in better condition than it was when they moved in. It was spotless.
One of the reasons we moved from that house was that there were a lot of trees around the property and a fair amount of hedging and it took a lot of maintenance. Eventually, I had to farm out that work and I came across a couple of guys who looked after it for me and they did a great job and they too were Polish.
I was having trouble with a few windows in my current home for a few years. They weren’t closing properly at the top or the bottom, only in the middle so they were draughty.
I made lots of calls to different window people over the years and I got various answers, but most companies told me they couldn’t do anything. One guy told me he could solve my problem for a zillion Euro while others had no interest and never got back to me.
I rang one company and explained my difficulty to a lady and she told me that somebody would contact me. When a week passed by and I didn’t hear anything, I called her back. She told me that she had passed on my message and she couldn’t do anymore so she advised me to ring this man myself. Needless to say, I didn’t bother.
Then one day out of the blue, an advertisement popped up on the Internet offering a professional service for repairing windows and doors. I sent off an email and the following morning at 7.45am I got a reply offering to call to me the following day at 11am. I wasn’t holding my breath but at the appointed time there was a knock on the door.
This window man introduced himself and as it happens, he is from Poland. He came over here about ten years ago, saw an opening and set up his company. He did a very professional job at a reasonable price and solved my problem.
I can remember, in a previous life, I had responsibility for engaging with members of the new communities in Cork City and at one stage during the 2000’s it was estimated that there were about 30,000 Polish nationals living in the greater Cork area.
While it was always expected that many of them would return to Poland when their economy improved, it was also acknowledged that many of them would stay and make Ireland their home and many did.
I, for one, am delighted they’re here. My experience has been absolutely positive and as far as work ethic and professionalism go, they could teach some of our home grown heroes a thing or two.