While many Polish immigrants to Ireland have decided to return home, thereby reducing demand for pastoral services in Polish, the national chaplain for the Polish community in Ireland has pledged that native Polish clergy will maintain a strong presence in this country to service Poles who are staying on. Fr Jaroslaw Maskiewicz said that while some thirty Polish priests who had come to Ireland to minister to their compatriots were also returning home, they would be replaced by others.
Before the recession, it was estimated that there were as many as 200,000 Polish people in Ireland.
However, the Irish economic crisis and in particular the collapse of the construction industry in which many male Polish immigrants had found employment, has prompted many to return home or move to another country.
But Fr Maskiewicz said that the Polish community staying on in Ireland would still be serviced with priests from their own country. "There are still many of us and people need a service in their own language," he remarked.
One prominent Polish priest who is returning home after serving in Sligo for the past three years has said that while many of his fellow countrymen have gone home, the majority are staying.
Fr Krzysztof Dulny ministered to up to 1,000 Polish Catholics in Counties Sligo, Donegal, Roscommon, Fermanagh and Mayo and celebrated Mass in Polish in the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Sligo every weekend.
He now estimates that the number of Polish people in the north-west has dropped by a quarter - from around 4,000 to 3,000 - but he believes many will remain in Ireland.
"Mainly, people arrived in Ireland for two to three years to earn money and then return to Poland, but then the financial crisis came to Poland too and they had to change their plans,” he said. "Some are still here because there is no place for them to go back to and they are just waiting."
Fr Dulny praised the warm welcome he received in Sligo and remarked that Polish people “as a people are not ready to welcome the way the Irish welcome. I am sad to go but it is normal after three years that you return to your own Diocese. I hope somebody will come to replace me,” he added.
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