Why no Irish need apply
AS a Dubliner living in Australia, Thomas Dunne did not expect he would ban Irish people from his hostel, but he has, six years after opening it in north Queensland.
This year was not the first time Mr Dunne had trouble with the Irish, but when two young men broke windows, a table and chairs, his decision was final.
The two men were brought to court and fined, since when, Mr Dunne has announced he doesn’t welcome Irish backpackers to his Main Street Backpackers hostel.
Mr Dunne, from Raheny in north Dublin, moved to Australia in 1986 even though he had a job in hospitality in Ireland.
“I remember going up to my boss at the Skylon Hotel, at the time, and asking for a reference for the Australian Embassy, and he said to me ‘What do you want to go there for? You’ve got a great job here’,” Mr Dunne says.
With his wife Audrey, (who had been working in a delicatessen in Phibsboro), Mr Dunne moved to Sydney.
After years working as a general manager in restaurants and private clubs around Sydney and New South Wales, in 2006 the Dunnes bought the Palace Hotel bar and hostel in Proserpine, near tropical Airlie Beach on the Queensland coast.
Initially, they were happy to welcome young, idealistic Irish people trodding the same path they had.
The hostel is set up to help backpackers who want to pursue a second-year working holiday visa in Australia. It is, Mr Dunne says, a “working hostel” which operates alongside their Irish bar, O’Duinns.
“The point of what we do is we organise the work for these people and, after 12 weeks, they get a second-year visa. Once the season starts, I’ve to get 30 people in, in May.
“I ring up the Harvest Trail line and I’ll say ‘I need 30 people and they put it on their website’.”
Mr Dunne says that once this notice is posted, he can expect 100 calls in the first two hours from backpackers around Australia chasing the golden ticket that will allow them to stay on and live in the Antipodes.
“It’s cut-throat to get the jobs,” he says. These jobs allow people on a one-year working holiday visa to extend it for another year, provided they work a certain amount of time doing rural work, such as fruit picking, or farm labouring.
"The Irish people don’t just rock in. If we ring this harvest line, we might get 10 that are Irish, you might get none. We take the first 30 that are close by. But if we get any Irish calling us for the next season, I’ll just say ‘sorry we’re full’,” he says.
The two lads who caused the damage this year, from Dublin, came at the start of the fruit-picking season.
“For the last couple of years, my wife and I actually discussed whether or not we’ll give the Irish another chance,” he says.
This year, at the start of the season, the Dunnes had eight Irish people living in the hostel, signed up to go working in local farms. But in a short space of time, members of this Irish group proved themselves irresponsible and caused criminal damage.
Some young Irish men who broke items at the hostel even sent abusive text messages to Mr Dunne and his family after they had left.
"All they seemed to want to do was get as much drugs as they could, followed by drink. These guys weren’t employable. One of them said he had started an apprenticeship in Dublin and hadn’t even finished that. Another one told me he couldn’t go back to Dublin, because he had an impending court case there, too.”
The Irish men were fined $90 each by a local court, and were also ordered to pay Mr Dunne $410 each in restitution.
“I won’t see any of that money,” Mr Dunne says. “They even got off lightly with that amount. I posted their letters, from the court, home to Dublin about two weeks ago, so it will be interesting to see if their mammies do anything about it.”
While all this was happening, a broader story was breaking in Australia.
Refugees, or ‘boat people’ as they are known, trying to come to Australia from various countries, drowned in their attempts to find a new life.
“All these people died around the same time I had this going on and I just kept thinking ‘why are we letting these people drown, why aren’t they getting a chance.’ Instead, we’re giving these people a chance who are here a few weeks and they’re smashing things up,” Mr Dunne says.
“Another two Irish lads were staying with me at the same time. The farm they were working on didn’t want them after two days, but those lads told me they had been working hard.
“So I stuck my neck out for them and got in touch with the farm. But the farm emailed me back another story and said that they weren’t pulling their weight, they were lazy and talked too much.
“Now they’ve told me they won’t take any more from the UK or Ireland.”
Mr Dunne is bemused at their behaviour, when he considers the opportunities they are being given: “They’re getting a second-year visa, they’re obviously not qualified to get it any other way,” he says.
“The last Irish person out of that group was an Irish nurse. We decided to let her stay, as she hadn’t caused any trouble and was just a few weeks away from completing her work to get her visa. On her last night, she broke our rules and had people back to the hostel.
“We don’t allow anyone back who isn’t staying here, it’s hostel rules and it dates back to 2009, when a staff member was hit over the head with a bottle by someone who wasn’t staying here.
“Not only that, but she had the use of a car to herself. When I got the car back, it was covered in goon [cheap cask wine] boxes and glasses, and the plastic panel on the inside of the door was ripped off.”
Mr Dunne says it’s only in the last three years that the hostel has been having problems with people causing damage.
It hasn’t always been like this.
“We always had problems with Irish and English lads staying up late drinking, but it’s only in the last three years where we’ve steadily been having problems with damage.
“I just read recently that 40% of the under-25s in Ireland are unemployed. And that’s apparently official figures, it’s probably more, and when you see the Government is doing nothing for them, bailing out banks and developers and doing nothing for the ordinary people ... it seems the Government’s strategy of growth is for people to emigrate — to get thousands of people overseas and out of their hair,” he says.
“Plenty of highly skilled Irish people are leaving, and getting on well. But I think what is happening is there’s a lot of people with no skills and no hope in Ireland and they’re coming over here, too, and it’s unfortunate, because we’ve had a few land at our door.”
Mr Dunne says Australian government training schemes for young people have been a success and he suggests this is a better idea for growing the country and an example the Irish could follow.
“If they [the Irish Government] keep taxing people, they just won’t have any more money to spend. My daughter works full-time here now and she did a school-based apprenticeship. From the age of 15, she worked one day behind the bar, got all her courses, and a tutor came out to her once a month.
“With the school-based apprenticeship, we got a government grant. It’s a good system the government has set up here. Maybe the Irish Government should consider doing something similar,” he says.
Mr Dunne knows other bars and hostels would like to ban the Irish, too, for bad behaviour, but will keep their silence.
“They think it will be bad for business, so they’re afraid to say anything,” he says. “But more and more people are contacting me and saying they agree with me and that it was about time someone said something.”
All that’s left for Mr Dunne now is to maintain his stance.
