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Tra More beach in Donegal (File photo) Wikicommons

'Magda' says Irish Independent story was 'completely not true'

The Polish woman at the centre of a controversial article which was mistranslated from a Polish newspaper has spoken out about her shock at the description of her life on the dole.

THE POLISH WOMAN at the centre of a controversial article which purported to describe her ‘wonderful’ life on the dole in Ireland has spoken out to say the description of her views was “completely not true”.

The woman, known only as ‘Magda’, told RTÉ Radio One’s John Murray Show this morning that the article in yesterday’s Irish Independent – based on an interview she gave to a Polish newspaper – had shocked her and said her real life is a “completely different story”.

The article said that ‘Magda’ thought that life on the dole was like a “Hawaiian massage” and said she had told the Polish newspaper that Donegal is a “shithole”. Labour senator Jimmy Harte reacted to the article by saying he would pay for the woman’s airfare to return to Poland.

However, the Polish ambassador to Ireland said in a letter to the newspaper that the article contained ”many inaccuracies”  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 original article in the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza revealed that while the 36-year-old did claim social welfare, it was not a situation she enjoyed.

‘Magda’ told The John Murray Show on RTÉ Radio that she had been told by friends of the controversy the Irish Independent translation of the article had caused.

At first I was completely shocked. You don’t know what to think. How is it possible for anybody to publish something that is just not true, completely not true and it’s not just misinterpretation, you know, or mistranslation – it’s just a completely different story.

She said things had been added to even the Polish version of the story but said most of it was about her actual life in a town near Letterkenny in Donegal. ‘Magda’ said that when she read the Irish Independent article she was “very worried”.

“People here, they know me well and they would know that this is not me,” she said.

The trained nanny revealed that she has lived in Ireland for the past six years and has been on the dole for the past year-and-a-half having previously worked in a hotels, hostels, and waitressing.

The thing is that jobs are scarce here. It is difficult, especially as I don’t drive so I can’t go to bigger towns.

“The other thing is that I worked in the hospitality industry and qualified as massage therapist and that’s something I wanted to do for a really long time and I decided that’s an option to start my own business, to do what I really want to do.”

‘Magda’ said that she has done a number of FÁS courses to help her set up her own business which she hopes to set up by Easter.

Of her actual lifestyle on the dole she added: ”My needs are not very high. That is in the article, I really try to live as cheap as possible. I don’t spend money on clothes, cosmetics, going out to the pub.

“I don’t have money for that. I have money for basic survival and that’s okay with me.”

Waitress told: ‘Go back to Poland’ after description of life on the dole in Ireland

Polish Ambassador responds to Irish Independent’s ‘Magda’ dole article: Full text

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93 Comments
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    Mute Eamon Harbison
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    Aug 11th 2011, 10:37 PM

    Seems to me that Amazon has no one to blame but itself if its data center lost power…. They should have had ample UPS to bridge the utility power loss and the time their N+1 generators kick in. Also, they should have diesel tanks onsite to store at least 72hours worth to run the center on full load, and a local supplier on contract to re-fill the tanks after 24 hours. If Amazon do not have any these redundancy measures in place, I would be very surprised… If they do and they still had power loss that affected their customers services, then they need to look internally for where to point the finger of blame!

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    Mute Christopher Duffin
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    Aug 12th 2011, 9:47 AM

    Not to mention their own software hampering restoration of the downed instances and a complete lack of help from their support in trying to restore things. This has been a joke from the beginning.

    I also cannot understand why they only had power from one sub station supplying the DC. Any data centre I’ve been involved with has had power coming from at least 2 sub stations to avoid these issues.

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    Mute John Jacob
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    Aug 11th 2011, 11:15 PM

    who gives a crap really ?!?!

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    Mute Darren O'Brien
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    Aug 12th 2011, 2:42 AM

    I give a crap. Our company had a good chunk of our infrastructure down
    for 2 days because of this. Im an Irish system administrator working in Spain and this was embarrassing to say the least. We chose Amazon for its reliability and really cutting edge cloud services. The fact that its in Ireland was a bonus and made me proud that one of the best cloud facilities in Europe, if not the world, is in my home country. But we’re going to think hard about continuing with Amazon as I’m sure many others will. It’s a pity but when your company’s existence depends on servers staying on, and even minutes of downtime cost thousands in revenue and incalculable loss of reputation, you’ve got to go where you’ll be sure this kind of thing doesn’t happen.

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    Mute Damian Keane
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    Aug 12th 2011, 12:30 AM

    People who think that Ireland could make some sorely needed money by being a reliable cloud computing bridgehead for Europe.

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    Mute fitszpatrick
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    Aug 12th 2011, 3:47 AM

    Loss of power is a serious issue. Hundreds of thousands of children on the brink of death by starvation with no back up systems. This is going to have a detrimental effect on their profitability.

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    Mute Jane Bresnan
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    Aug 12th 2011, 8:04 AM

    Maybe there was a lack of surge protection? 48 hours is a long time for a data center to be down. There must have been equipment damage. All data centers will have bought at least two independant feeds from the esb as well, were the esb supplying both from the same substation?

    It is very embarrassing for this to happen. Ireland has been trying to market itself as an ideal data center location because of the lack of extreme weather conditions, distance from earthquake zones and political stability. Top class electrical infrastructure is part of that marketing speil.

    We do not want to lose the investment and employment brought by these corporates.

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