Ireland is a hard place to live

[Mooshamoo]

Just watching the video of the black child being not given a medal by Irish gymnastics.

I was wondering if there is anyone else on here on craicnet, who is not Irish, living in Ireland. What your experiences are.

I think that Ireland can be a very hard place to live if you are not fully white and fully irish.

I'm half Irish. I was bullied all the way through school for not having an Irish surname. Then when I grew up and lived in the same small town, all of the same girls from my school were living in that town. And as adults they refused to talk to me.

I see the women who are fully Irish, being popular , having great lives.

To be totally acceptable and popular in ireland, you have to have a rich family, brothers/father who play gaa etc.

All the rich girls in my school hung around together. And again as adults all the rich Irish women hung around together in small town Ireland.

If you were foreign, from a single parent family, seen as poor, you were not accepted at all.

And it's who you know

I think this makes Ireland a very difficult place to live

Ghostgarden is Irish yes.

Ghostgarden you're entitled to your opinion, but I can point out, that people often come on Mumsnet and talk about things more than one time.

There is no rule that says you can only talk about a topic once.

I've seen a poster talk about her boss and problems in her work, on three different threads.

You can't really say to posters: you've already posted about this once, so you can't post about it again. As that is not a rule on Mumsnet.

I moved from Ireland to England as a child and the other school children used to play a game where they all had to run away from me because I was the IRA and had a bomb. When we moved back to Ireland the other school children used to make fun of my English accent. Kids are mean. It's not nice, but kids are tribal and often play on us versus them. It's not exclusive to Ireland - or England.

@Mooshamoo, I haven't searched for your username. Doesn't it tell you something about how frequently you post about the same thing that I don't even need to see your name to recognise you? I suspect many of us would even if you namechanged.

No one is going to carp at someone who posts repeatedly for support in an ongoing situation, and I suspect if you said 'I'm still living in the same small town in which I was bullied as a half-foreign schoolchild, and I find it very difficult', people would help and advise. And that advice would probably be to leave and/or have therapy. What you seem to be doing is looking for fuel for your own unhappiness, and to be completely stuck.

What do you want from these threads?

It is an ongoing situation by the way. I moved to another town in Ireland, very far away from my original town. I was at a meetup group yesterday.

I got chatting to a man. He said oh where are you from. I mentioned the small town in Ireland. He said "oh do you know Ann Ryan! She's from there. I work with her".

Ann Ryan (name changed) was a really big bully and awful to me when I was younger.

I instantly felt anxious. I feel like Ireland is so small that you just can't get away from people.

I am so sorry that this is your experience and I am not at all surprised - I’m an Irish person with only irish heritage and am now living in Ireland.

My experience of living and raising my family here is incredibly positive but Ireland is a very homogeneous place and anyone even slightly outside the ‘usual’ is bound to find it more challenging. Some of it might be intentional, some of it not, but I can see that there will be reactions and behaviour that could be incredibly hurtful, disrespectful and thoughtless.

The comment above around ‘my child is in an educate together so I don’t see the problem ‘ is very typical. Being in a progressive school will not make up for the many micro aggressions someone might experience.

Its up to Irish people and Irish governments to just do better

I disagree to a point. Ireland is still quite a homogenous culture. England has been a melting pot (big cities anyway) for so many years

I think every small town is different. My dd is half Irish and went to school in Dublin. Fortunately she did not have your experiences.

But, back in the day I had a friend who was a single mother from a small town and her parents wanted her to hide the child when she was visiting

English Hispanic living in Ireland - never had a problem, have friends from all walks of life and in general I find Irish people kind and giving, with the odd dirty / non pc joke thrown about.
I think you are clouding your judgment with your own unfortunate past

Sorry quote function is not working but answering your q on page 1 re why it was difficult being English in an Irish primary school... I wasn't singled out or bullies, it was just the hatred towards all English people that took a while to get my head around.

You know that person that keeps telling you the same story over and over...

@GhostGarden im not Irish and I’m not British so have no interest about this particular subject either way.

But your description of your experience in England is 😳😳
im not sure you realise what you are saying. That your experience in the U.K. was so crap that you felt you had to move away after 20 years - which really means moving away from what was your home and certainly your dcs home (if you have any). But that is ok because somewhere in England, not everyone is like this?!? You’ve been bullied out but you somehow think you are superior to the OP because ‘you’ve taken control and moved back home’ which is exactly what the narrow minded people you met wanted

i mean if anything you’ve just proven her point that all those micro aggressions are deeply hurtful 🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️

Also are you somehow advising the OP to move away from her own country? 😵‍💫😵‍💫 Because, I have to say, I’m not quite sure what else you are proposing.

I think that when you reread this, you will be deeply embarrassed at your victim-blaming.

I know of someone who had the exact opposite experience in an ET school, their child felt very much left out of things. They felt non white foreigner was fine if you were the right type of non white foreigner which they weren't and there was lots of snobbery. They found the local national school much more diverse snd socially mixed.

She said whilst her child had later won a medal, this was a participation medal that every child gets, and her daughter had been passed by.

The above is from a news article on the RTE website reporting what the girl's mother said. So there is something in the media about the girl winning a medal, but RTE don't make it clear whether confusion about this is the reason she was skipped.
I really hope it was just confusion, a simple mix-up.

that every child - meaning whether you placed or not gets. You don't not get one because you won. She had a medal left over at the end- so didn't she wonder? The black girl placed second. By that logic the 1st place and 3rd place girls - both white shouldn't have recieved medals. They did.

Please don't gaslight by trying to explain this grotesque glaring act of racism by saying it's a simple mix- up.

ET school here and we're white irish, this is our second ET and i have to say we didn't have that experience in either. Just goes to show, every school is different!

Ah here, I didn't say it was a simple mix-up.
I said I hoped it was a simple mix-up.
Yeah, I hope that judge was confused or incompetent rather than a racist pig.

Lots of competitions give out runners-up rather than participants medals, but I think the explanation isn't a probable one at the moment unfortunately, mainly because GI didn't add it to their apology or statements. At least I don't think they did? And I can't see why they wouldn't. Because there's a really huge difference between not giving the girl a medal because she's black and not giving it because you in essence think she's too good (as a winner) for it.

I'm not trying to gaslight, but I don't like making judgements without being really very sure of all the facts of the case.

OP - I’m sorry to hear your story of being bullied for who you are and the impact it has on you. I’m sorry you’re still suffering and feel that things haven’t got better.

Personally, I’m white Irish who has lived abroad for 17 years. I returned “home” in 2022 with my English H and children. We gave living back in Ireland a “shot” for a year but unfortunately it didn’t work out so we returned to our original country this year.

I agree that Ireland can be a hard place to make things work but (for us) mostly due to the major issues Ireland is facing with housing, health care and education. My family did have comments about us not being “Irish” on a number of occasions and I had some very unprofessional comments in my workplace about me being from the wrong side of the border (I was brought up just over the border) to the extent I felt the need to keep reiterating my family were all from the republic but that my parents so happened to move 5 miles down the road , which was over the border. Now that type of prejudice was shocking and something I didn’t expect to encounter when I moved back. Ireland is still very much monocultural and I did hear stories of some of my friends from other countries having some issues. But equally, I heard many success stories of other ethnicities integrating well. We tried really hard to make it work but in the end, it didn’t and we accepted that and moved on.

Regarding the race issue, in my time in Ireland my observations are that Ireland isn’t prepared for the multiculturalism its government welcomes. Some (not all) in Ireland suffering due to these issues are unfortunately blaming the influx of other ethnicities into the country and not the government, who are the ones to blame. There appears to be a lot of misdirected anger that the government needs to acknowledge and address. They’ve enough money to sort out a proper immigration/integration policy so god knows why they just don’t get on with it.

Regarding the incident with the little black girl and GI - it was clearly racist. The stories about her not being given a medal because they were participation medals is BS as the other kids who were also winners got their medals at the time the black girl was ignored. Furthermore, her mother has just announced they want anti-racism training in the sports so she wouldn’t be saying that if it wasn’t a race issue. It was and it was absolutely disgusting and I feel for the girl, her family and those people who rightfully felt hurt by what happened.

I really hope you find peace OP and feel that life can be good. There are many many good people out there in Ireland and the world over who don’t care where you come from or what the colour of your skin is. Take care.

In my job in the last week i have chatted to two russian nationals- one living here from Moscow and one from siberia - both here years. I asked them are they maybe wary telling people their nationality given the war and they both said no irish people so nice- they understand its not them and they are just sad its so hard to get home to see family with the restrictions. Just an example

DS's primary school class had a vocally anti-Russian substitute teacher for a week or two last year, and a delegation from the class went to the Head to ask her to speak to her because it was upsetting a Russian classmate. There were also two newly-arrived Ukrainian children in the class, and the children were trying to be sensitive to everyone. It's far from a perfect school, but I thought it was a good sign of the social sensitivity of fifth-class children (Educate Together city school -- very socially and ethnically mixed, and a lot of Ukrainians joining...)

That was fab from the class a f school
Some teachers go overboard with personal beliefs. Like my DD class was told how bad Trump was
I mean like fgs leave it ouh!!

I think it's worse getting bullied in Ireland than in England, because in Ireland there is no escape from people.

Say in a city in England, if you are bullied in a primary school. You can go and make friends in acting classes, dance classes. People that are not in your school.

In small town ireland, if you are bullied in school, and then you go to a dance class, the same girls from school are in your dance class. And I find that the girls turn everyone against you. So you end up speaking to no one. The same - when you grow up and become an adult ,the same girls are in workplaces. The bullying is relentless.

I want to move to a town to be closer to my mother. As she is old and ill. I wouldn't even be moving to my hometown , i would be moving to a town about two towns away. I was looking at jobs in that town , and I see that girls I went to school with are working there. So I instantly feel nervous and I know they will make my life a misery again. I'm in my thirties. I know if I take a job in this town there'll be one to two people from the school I went to, and they will turn the other women against me. It's happened before.

Bullying in Ireland is relentless, as the place is so small you have to bump into people all the time and they do not accept you if you are English. It's a very lonely and hard life. I just feel so weak and broken down

My brother who went through all the same relentless bullying that I did in small town Ireland, also has no friends, and also says he has nothing to live for.

Thank you.