A New Life:Hard work and investment is beginning to pay off for this Polish man who has chosen Ireland as his new home. Michelle McDonaghreports
Like so many of his fellow country men, Polish man Mariusz Wloch came to Ireland with a vision of a better life for himself and his family. Now, through long hours of sheer hard work and investing his hard-earned euro in equipment, it looks like that dream is becoming a reality.
Born in Gogolin, in southwest Poland, Wloch studied civil engineering for 10 years at Politechnika Opolska in the city of Opole about 50km from his home village.
"Like many other students in Poland, I studied so long because I did not want to go into the army. Every six months for 10 years, I changed address so that they could not give me the draft letter, if they couldn't find me, they couldn't get me to sign it. The government played with us and we played with the government," he remarks bitterly.
Wloch and many of his friends are very angry at the Polish government who they feel have left them with no choice but to leave their home country to make a better life for themselves.
In his excellent precise English, he explains: "In Poland, when you spend €1,000 on an employee, you must pay the government another €800 and you never see this money back which means every employee costs nearly double. In Ireland, it only costs the employer 6 per cent of the wage. We are very angry at how the Polish government has wasted our money, all we can do is move away."
An ambitious entrepreneur from a young age, Wloch started a small business at 17 selling his own black and white ink prints. When he moved to Opole, he began cleaning the windows and roofs of the big manufacturing companies in the city, employing six workers during the summer months as well as keeping himself.
He met his wife, Katarzyna, on her first day as a marketing student at Opole and they have been together since. After 10 years of attending university and cleaning windows, Wloch finally graduated with a masters degree and moved on to renovating roofs.
After the loss of his best friend from brain cancer at the age of 34, Wloch decided as he stood at the graveside that life was too short and it was time for him and his wife to make a change.
"I knew I didn't want to go to Germany because I had worked there before and not liked it. We didn't want to go to England because there are too many Polish there, we heard stories of them sleeping in bus stations in London and other cities because there was no work for them. We wanted to go to a place where we knew nobody so we came to Ireland."
Wloch gave himself a deadline of five years to make a success of his new life in Ireland. Before leaving Poland, he sent out more than 1,000 CVs by e-mail and found a job as a shop assistant.
He travelled across Europe by car three months ahead of his wife and their one-year-old son Leonardo. Although well used to being an employer, Wloch was very nervous on his first day as an employee in Ireland but he soon settled into the job and within a few months was promoted to supervisor.
After a year of working 60 hours a week, Wloch moved to Blarney Filling Station as supervisor. In August 2006, he set up his own business, Super Mario Services, an agency for cleaning, DIY and gardening services.
He promised himself that when the income from his business was three times his wage at the filling station, he would leave and this happened in February 2007. In the meantime, Katarzyna was successful in getting a job at the Bank of Ireland in Mallow.
He explains: "From the first day I came to Ireland, I did not spend my money on pleasures, I invested it in expensive tools of all kinds like powerwashers and gardening tools. After a year and a half, I had built up enough equipment to provide a business. A lot of happy customers recommended me to friends and the business grew through word of mouth."
Although the cost of living is much higher in Ireland than in Poland, the wages are four times higher here, explains Wloch. The average wage in Poland is about €500 per month while in Ireland men can earn well over €2,000 per month in the building industry and women can earn €1,200-€1,700 in cleaning jobs and the retail and catering industries.
"Most of my friends here plan to stay five or six years in Ireland but the longer they stay, the more difficult it is to move back to Poland. I know people who moved back to Poland and after three months, returned to Ireland. After being paid so high, it's impossible to go back to the low wages. It's much easier to survive and to save in Ireland," he says.
By keeping an eye on flight promotions, Wloch and his family can afford to fly home up to five times a year. He and his wife love the cinema and go to see a film at least once a week.
In the future, the ambitious young Pole plans to expand into bigger landscaping and building jobs and to hopefully attract more big contracts. His son is starting play school in September and his wife is enjoying her career in the bank.
"I have absolutely no idea where me and my family will be after two or three years. We feel so strong after making the move to Ireland that there is no place in the world that we could not start a new life.
"Over my two years here, I have never felt any less than an Irish person. It probably helps that we have white skin, are Catholic, eat a lot of potatoes and like alcohol," he laughs.