November 27 2015

“Guests of the Nation”. Never did we conceive of having so many.

In 1931 Frank O’Connor published the story of two British soldiers held captive somewhere in Ireland to be treated as hostage guests and used for purposes of recrimination in the event of the British committing some outrage or other against our sacred island or our brave soldiers.

O’Connor was well equipped to write the story having joined the First Brigade of the Irish Republican Army in 1918 and served in combat during the Irish War of Independence. He opposed the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 and joined the Anti-Treaty IRA during the Irish Civil War, working in propaganda in Cork City. He was one of twelve thousand Anti-Treaty combatants who were interned by the government of the new Irish Free State. Between 1922 and 1923 O'Connor was imprisoned in Cork City Gaol.

Neil Jordan’s film ‘The Crying Game’ was inspired by O'Connor's short story.

Nowadays we entertain an enormous army of different guests of the nation. According to the Central Statistics Office Poles, Latvians and Lithuanians now number over 200,000. After the 2011 Census it was calculated that 550,000 of our permanent residents were non-Irish nationals. Has this migration been beneficial or otherwise? Hard to call. Has their contribution to Ireland in social, economic or cultural terms been positive or helpful? It is imprudent or unwise to generalise but the overview that I have garnered is that while British citizens, who make up the second biggest ethnic grouping, are positive, contributing and decent in the main.

The Eastern Europeans contribute very little and in many cases have adopted a leech-like attitude to their new homeland. The levels of crime in which Eastern Europeans are involved is greatly disproportionate to their numbers in society. How do I know? Read the court-case reports in any provincial newspaper in the Republic and the evidence is irrefutable. They invariably get ‘Free Legal Aid’ and an interpreter at enormous cost to the Irish taxpayer and in many cases seem to have total disregard for the laws of our land.

If the climate of opinion gets a little overheated in respect of any of these people they can always piss off home. Another example of their civic spirit can be evinced from a quick visit to the social welfare office in Longford. You can play the game of spot the Irish accent and you would be detained for more than a little while. Their concept of civic spirit is poles apart.

It might be construed that my attitude towards some of these people is a little hostile and bordering on racist. I repeat that I reflect common if not popular opinion among many of the people I know and with whom the Prodigal discusses such matters. On a personal level I am entitled to comment on my own experience of interaction with some of these people.

Do Eastern Europeans support Irish retail outlets, hotels or pubs? No! They have their own shops wherein they purchase their groceries and other commodities which ironically represent much better value than any of the Irish shops. We almost always buy Polish ham which retails at a quarter the price of a similar amount in local supermarkets and tastes a lot better. They never socialise in Irish pubs except to make a nuisance when they are already carrying a full off-licence load of liquor.

Again, considering the price of drink in Irish pubs, it’s hard to blame them. As for hotels, they are happy to work there but never don the garb of guests. It is all too common to find that they work in the black market economy, regularly living off state benefits, and demand every perk of the welfare system as if they have a divine right to so do. They represent a considerable share of persons nominated on Local Authority housing lists and are very demanding in this regard. They even insist on religious services being held in their own languages and shun any other.

In half a decade or more of activity with the local Tidy Towns Committee I have collected monumental amounts of discarded rubbish.

There are invariably three common denominators. The source of the fly-tipping is always from a rented property, and in every single case is dumped by either a member of the mobile fraternity or a Non-Irish national. They don’t believe in paying for refuse collection at any level.

I personally prevented foreign children from dumping in adjacent property and saw to it that their cargo of disgusting household refuse was brought back to their own house. Two days later the same rubbish was deposited at another location which activity was pointed out to the litter warden. She promptly issued a hefty fine for littering which was received by the offending party.

The first reaction of the mammy of the house was to bring me the fine notice and ask if I could get it quashed! I advised her to pay it immediately and pointed out how lucky she was that the amount was so modest compared to what it might have been. No bother ever since. Again in general terms these people contribute nothing to the local environment and avoid any commitment to positive contribution to the areas in which they live. There it is as I see it.