Today, Sunday Times devoted its attention to the problem of avoiding Irish health care and dental service by Eastern Europeans. I am quoted in that article.
There is couple of reasons why Poles and other Eastern Europeans avoid it and prefer to cure themselves while visiting the homeland:
1. Price: Total cost of a dental treatment in Poland varies from 20 (simple treatment) to 50 Euro (cleaning channels etc.). It is not expensive, especially when we are in Poland visiting our families. Then we are going to dentist. So usually we don’t go to Poland only for dental treatment. Even if we have to go only for dental treatment: plane tickets cost now even less than 20 Euro one way. (I paid 17,50 one way)
2. Lingo: Most of the Eastern Europeans don’t speak proper English enough to explain what is going wrong or what pains.
3. Confidence: We trust our doctors and dentists in Poland. They are usually like a family ones. We usually have used their services for years and we don’t want to change it. I have just found out that some Poles don’t trust Irish health system and dental service. There are a couple of examples, when my friends had to wait 3 or 4 hours to visit a doctor of the first contact - as we call it.
4. Attitude to the living in Ireland: most of emigrants mentally still live in Poland. I mean they are working here, earning money, but they eat Polish food (which is available here), watch Polish TV (Satelite receivers - kind of SKY - brought from Poland), reading Polish press (issued in Ireland and brought from Poland), and living virtual live in Poland (via Internet). The only thing we can’t bring is a health care and dental service. But we can go and use it while we are in Poland (see point 1).
I can understand why Polish people would prefer to use their own health service. It makes sense. It’s better.
I don’t understand why they eat Polish food, drink Polish beer and watch Polish movies. What would be wrong with making friends among the Irish?
To be honest… Poles are not used to Irish food. We have an excellent cuisine and it is much better than Irish. Try Polish smoked sausages, cheese, sour cucumbers or sour cabbage.
The other things… well.. it is as I wrote… they brought Poland to the place of temporary stay. They are working in Ireland but they are not living in Ireland.
As far as meeting Irish people is concerned I have been asking myself the same question for almost a year. I haven’t found a good answer yet.
Here in Nenagh I am working in a crew of Polish archaeologist. Most of them don’t go to pubs, they don’t know any local Irish person, apart of some from the company we are working for.
The same was in Carlow, and I have friends in Limerick where is the same.
Maybe it is due to the a enormous number of Poles. I don’t know.
I can not understand that. I have always been a person interested in other cultures and countries.
There is other view on that - I am going out to the pub every weekend and so far I haven’t got any new friends among people of my age. Most of them know I am Polish and they respect me, but they are not very willing to socialize.
Sometimes I walk to the traditional pub, where I became a local among older Irish men.
I used to live and work in US for some time, some years ago. I met many people of different nationalities, profesions, lifestyles. All those years there I was heavily socializing and hardly can say now that I had made some close friends while there. It’s rather I kind of never was able to breake through the nationality, outsider stigma. Even when I was already withing the circle of particular group it was always easy to gang up against me. I then tended to socialize within my nationality group often critisizing my choice for company since often they were people I would rather had not much to do when at home. Full integration I would claim is hardly possible; it requires lots of years living in another culture to be comfortable with both (your own and the 2nd one). Then you are capable of switching between them back and forth kind of like first generation of immigrants who soak in one culture at home and absorb another away.
Hey Mac! Did you see that your blog is on the shortlist for Best Photo Blog. Well done. They just published the final list here.
You seem like a decent and open sort of character. There are lots of Polish women who at least smile a bit even if they look a bit dour and serious when working in the service sector, where most of us Paddies would meet them. Polish males, however, frequently have a straightforwardly nasty look in their eye in my experience, as if they mean you no good at all and overall the Poles come across as cold and quite strict-minded and distant. These are the impressions that frequently emanate from the vibes given off by Poles as exerienced with our culture, which does not appreciate these things. This wouldn’t be a problem with only a few - we’d put it down to personality or whatever - but with hundreds of thousands of Poles in the country coming across as so unfriendly in your host nation, so disdainful and uninterested in fact, is a recipe for future trouble.
You should try Dentist in Nenagh Dental Clinic!