The Long And the Short Of It
The Mayor of Limerick, Jim Long, has been embroiled in a number of controversies recently. So who is he? What does he represent? And is he really a racist, as his accusers claim?
Olaf Tyaransen, 18 Apr 2012
So you think prostitution should be legalised?
I wouldn’t go as far as to say that. I’ve never used their services (smiles), but there’s another argument that where you have prostitution, young women and elderly women are actually safe, because sex is a need for a lot of people. For most men it’s a need, and these (prostitutes) are providing a need. Now again, I’m very clear. I’m not condoning prostitution, but let’s sit up and kind of deal with it and regulate it. I’m not saying legalise it, but we are no different to any other country, and if it suits a need, maybe we should take a look at it. The question you asked was what was my take on the 21 men. Those prostitutes are still operating. They’re still there. Where’s our sting operation today? We don’t have the resources to stop it. Now, I can drive past and identify the same young women seven nights a week. And if I can do it, surely an undercover guard can do it. That’s my bone of contention. They’re still operating. Their services are still being used and they’re still making money, but because of the sting operation, they’ve made the public wise as to how not to get caught.
In 2009 you were accused of racism when you allegedly said that migrant workers who hadn’t contributed to the local economy should be sent home.
Yes, but my comment was not taken the way it was meant. My comment was made right outside that window with a television crew who edited part of what I said, and what I said was – I’m going to say it again – that when we signed up on the Nice Treaty, we opened the floodgates to the Eastern Bloc countries. We didn’t do what other European countries did, and we should have capped the number coming in. It is very fair to say that we had a section of jobs abundant in the country, but there was too many allowed in that we should have capped. What we did as a country was we fast-forwarded the recession button [clicks fingers]. Everything happened too quick. We then tried to compromise by bringing down the minimum wage, but we drove people from the top down instead of bringing people from the bottom up. Those people on €15 [per hour] or more were exploited in the sense that if they didn’t want to work for €8 an hour, there would be nine Polish guys who would do it. That was buried in the argument of job creation and full employment. But we actually suffered and we are still suffering because of that. We drove the people who had €500/€800 mortgages, they couldn’t get those mortgages again. You wouldn’t get a mortgage on €8 an hour but you got it on €15. Now you had the mortgage and you were expecting these people to pay one on €8. They couldn’t pay it. What I said and I’ll say it again was: I have no axe to grind with the Polish, the Latvians or anybody else. They’re all welcome. I’m a man of inter-culture. I’m certainly not a racist. My son is marrying an Indian next week in Malaysia.
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