Article left Polish woman ‘shocked’

By Conall Ó Fátharta

Friday, February 03, 2012

The Polish woman at the centre of a controversial Irish Independent article has said she was "shocked" that the badly translated piece was published in the first place.

Speaking on RTÉ radio yesterday morning, Magda (not her real name), said the article was so inaccurate that had she read it about another Polish person, she would have agreed that the person should "go home".

"If I didn’t know it was from this Polish article, I would be really angry at this Polish girl and I would say exactly the same thing, like that if you hate it here and think that you live in a shithole, go home," she said.

The article was presented as Magda’s account of her life on the social welfare in Donegal.

Magda said that her first reaction to the story, which appeared in Wednesday’s Irish Independent, was one of shock at its inaccuracy.

"At first I was completely shocked. You don’t know what to think. How is it possible for anyone to publish something that is just completely not true. It’s not just misinterpretation or mistranslation, it’s just a completely different story," she said.

Magda, who came to Ireland six years ago, said while she had been worried about reaction to the story, people where she lives know she is not a "welfare tourist".

The Polish Embassy in Dublin said it received a large amount of criticism about the article yesterday.

"We received many phonecalls and emails, mainly from Irish people but also Polish people complaining about the standard of journalism in the article. Some have said they would file a complaint with the Press Ombudsman," a spokesperson said.

When contacted, the Press Ombudsman’s office said that it did not comment on individual cases.

Meanwhile, Labour Senator Jimmy Harte was forced to apologise yesterday for remarks he made on Twitter on Wednesday night.

Mr Harte was the subject of criticism on the social networking site after comments he made to the Irish Independent, where he said he would "like to see her [Magda] go back to Poland" and would "gladly pay for the flight home".

In one tweet, he told a user to "go back up the mountain you came down from" while he told another to "get a life". Other tweets accused people of an "anti-Donegal bias", being a "FF lackey" while another labelled a user a "pseudo-concerned git". A further tweet stated: "You are xenophobic. Anti Donegal. When was the last time you had a non-national in your home? Never I suspect. I do. Go back to D4."

In a Labour Party statement yesterday, Mr Harte apologised "unreservedly".

"The comments were made in the heat of the moment and went well beyond an acceptable level of online interaction. I accept full responsibility for what I said, and fully withdraw my remarks. I unreservedly apologise for any offence they may have caused," he said.

This appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Friday, February 03, 2012