IN POLE POSITION

However you rate AIB as a banking institution, they should be applauded for the role they played, albeit unwittingly, in bringing Izabela Chudzicka to our shores.
The 25 year-old economics student had been working in the bank’s Polish division after graduation. There she became firm friends with several of her Irish co-workers – it was only after they moved back home that she entertained the idea of moving here. “I was working with many Irish people in the head office and I became friends with a lot of them and then, when the projects we were working on finished and my friends went home, I stayed in touch with them,” she remembers. “My move here wasn’t really planned at all. If there was one Polish person that was happy back home and had everything sorted in terms of life, well then that was me. It was very spontaneous and spur-of-the-moment because the people that I was in touch with said ‘come over and see what you think’. I thought to myself, well nothing ventured nothing gained and if you don’t like the place you could move back. But, of course, I didn’t.”
Izabela, who is from Zabkowice Slaskie in southern Poland, will be familiar to those who have come across Ota Polska (This is Poland), the programme she presents on City Channel. “The whole idea was to do something for Polish people here in Ireland and we came up with this idea when City Channel started last year,” she says.
The programme has evolved a lot since then. “At the moment I am doing some stuff on it in English because we have been getting a lot of feedback from Irish people, who say it is very interesting but we would like to know what she is talking about,” she states. “We are trying to do something more multicultural at the moment because we feel that there is a bigger audience for it.”
Has she noticed many changes for Polish people since she first arrived? “Oh the differences between now and then are huge. It’s really unbelievable, you couldn’t compare,” she exclaims. “When I first moved here, for the first six months or maybe even more, I didn’t know any other Polish people here. Bumping into someone on the street who spoke Polish was just amazing, so you would always stop and ask where they were from and when they came over and stuff like that. But now you can walk around the street anywhere and hear Polish and a lot of the people that work in shops and also a lot of the waitresses are Polish.
“I remember when you had to apply for a visa, and queueing up from 2am at the immigration office to be in the first 100 people to be able to apply for a work permit or study visa, so you can’t even compare it to now when all you have to do is pack your bags and move.”
It is estimated that the number of Polish people in this country at the moment exceeds the combined populations of Roscommon and Letrim. For such a large cohort, they have integrated into Irish society remarkably smoothly. Izabela believes that the traditionally nomadic nature of the Irish is the underlying reason for this. “I never met anybody from Ireland who said anything bad about Polish people. Obviously there are so many of us here at the moment that there will be problems – but in general we get on so well because you have gone through what we are going through at the moment so you understand what it means,” she maintains. “Your economic situation 20 years ago was very similar to the way ours is now – the only difference is that the population of Ireland is four million and Poland’s is 40 million and that makes a huge difference.”
Even though the majority of Poles have slotted relatively easy into everyday Irish life, there can still be problems fitting in here. “The main problem that I can see now is that those Poles that can speak English very well and moved here a few years ago, they socialise more outside the Polish community and have more Irish friends so they settle here much quicker and better – whereas other Polish people that have come over more recently and don’t necessarily speak English very well just took a chance really and they don’t allow themselves to go out and meet the Irish and get used to this culture, so they’re not happy and usually end up going home much faster than anyone else.”
Although she is seen as a kind of spokesperson for the Polish community here, Izabela is keen to ensure that the general public are aware of the other communities that have developed here in recent times. “What I wish truly and honestly to happen is that we will be looking at different cultures here as well. Okay, I’m Polish and we talk about Polish people here with their newspapers and TV programmes but there are other cultures here as well and I think that it would be great to see more happening for the Latvians, Lithuanians, Slovakians and all the rest.”
For now though, the ambitious presenter is setting her sights on becoming a familiar face on Irish television: “I hope that I will be able to get more work in RTE. I was on the panel one night for Questions & Answers, I was a guest on The Afternoon Show and I was also on a panel on the Late Late Show one night, which was great,” she enthuses. “I have gotten the feel of what it is like to work in RTE and I think it would be hilarious to have someone who doesn’t have the regular accent presenting on Irish TV.”
photos: Graham Keogh