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I've just seen this mentioned on the news. The British taxpayer partially funds the health service in Ireland because many Irish people come to the UK to work for their working lives, then return to Ireland as pensioners. The thinking is that as they have worked and paid tax here and have now left the country they should get healthcare over there that is partially paid for by British taxes, as it is effectively their own money they are getting back.

This makes sense in the most part, but in two areas I think it is odd: for a start, many Irish people who do building and labouring jobs in London, Liverpool, and Manchester, do it cash-in-hand and illegally claim Beneifts whilst doing so, and this is at the same time as getting healthcare, free schooling and healthcare for their kids (if they have them) and so on, whilst here.

I've known many Irish people in London who have admitted all this to me. One guy I knew who worked doing building work in north London, along with loads of other Irishmen, told me once that it was very straightforward for the boss to pay them at the end of each week. I nievely said that surely it is complex for the guy to have to do everyone's tax, national insurance, etc, then pay everyone into their bank accounts - just like any employer would hav to do. He said "no, its all cash, the entire workforce in on the dole". An Irish guy I knew in London, who came from Liverpool, said it was all the rage on the building sites up there as well.

My second point: many British residents retire abroad (to Spain, Australia, etc) after having paid heaps of tax here all their lives, and no money is given from the UK Treasury to their health services to co-fund them. Bearing all of what I've said here in mind, is it right for the UK taxpayers to give money to help fund the health service in Ireland?

Max, you seem a bit to keen to accept what you hear from a couple of guys in a pub as factual evidence of widespread practices. I dare say there's some truth to it but you can't go making generalisations of 'most' and 'many' on the basis of a sample of a handful of people.

If it were true it would be as unjust as 'Fred The Shred's' pension etc being paid out of the public purse. Last week there was a rape case that went to court and was dismissed after a couple of hours. How much public money was spent on that and how much went into the pockets of legal professionals ? If the Judge could see it was a flawed case why couldn't the CPS ?

There is a lot of misspending of public money and you have to look at the big picture as well as the Irish navvies.

Half the posters on this board now preach myths they heard from a bloke in the pub.

I think the trolling on here is now silly proportions.

I have met that man in the pub, he's full of shit!

Amen to that.

Labourers being paid cash in hand, eh?

Whatever next? !shocked!

mate you obviously have no idea how the building game works these days.apart from the odd spark or chippy i cant remember the last time i saw a tea caddy on a building site.all the jobs they used to do cash in hand have been swallowed up by the eastern europeans and africans on minimum wage.at leat the paddys spent every single penny they had on fags and booze and it went back into the economy whereas this latest lot send every bit of their wages out of the country.the way the Irish grafted and the shit conditions they lived in took years if not decades off their lives so what if we give them a bit back in their old age?

I agree that the Paddy's here spent most of it in the pub rather than send it home, unlike a lot of people who come across the sea to work here who nowadays who do send it home.

I remember this same Irishman who I mentioned in the earlier part of my original post above who said to me that if you wanted to wind up a load of navvies and labourers then walk onto a site and say loudly "I'm from the Inland Revenue, are you all sorted out?". He said that guys would leap over back walls, others would stand up with a terrified look on their faces and say "yes, yes". He said that if an Inland Revenue official ever did that for real everyone on the site (who hadn't volted over the back wall) would claim to have started work there that morning.

I mentioned earlier about an Irish guy I knew from Liverpool who told me the same practices went on up there. Another thing he mentioned was all the insurance scams that used to go on. Aswell as people claiming Benefits and working cash in hand, he said that JCB's and plant equipment would vanish from a site one night, the owner of the company would put in an insurance claim saying it had been stolen, and then a few weeks later this guy would be working on another site, owned by the same building firm, and the JCB would miraculously re-appear! The same with other equipment that had been 'stolen' too.

Cunt