I'VE been in Ireland for four years, before that I was in England for six years and Australia for almost 20. I left Poland in 1978. I'm from Gliwice in Upper Silesia. I try to go back once a year in the summer.

When I first came to Ireland, the archbishop asked me to help in setting up a church to cater for the large number of Polish immigrants in Dublin. We were given St Michan's Church on Halston Street near the Four Courts and we held regular masses in Polish.

The church was too small though - we'd get around six thousand people coming to mass every week - so in September it moved to St Audeon's on High Street. I was finding the commuting too much so now I stay in my own parish and a priest from Warsaw has taken over in the city centre.

On Sundays I usually get up at around six and go for an hour's walk around the parish. I don't particularly enjoy it; it's for health reasons so it feels like a bit of a chore. It's quite a mixed area and the parish is busy though ageing. We have a new parish council though and there are lots of possibilities. I like the prospect of new thinking and new trends - change is energising.

On a normal Sunday we have six masses in English and one in Polish. In the new year though we'll have to reduce that to five in total because one of our priests is returning to the UK and we won't have the manpower to cover all the masses that we have currently.

Typically I'll say two masses every Sunday - we move the times around between us so that the parishioners don't get bored hearing the same person week after week.

We have a traditional Sunday lunch after the morning masses - roast chicken or lamb usually - and the afternoon is taken up with baptisms and visits to the sick and elderly with communion.

In the evening I relax by going out for a meal locally - I like being by the sea so Toscana's on the seafront is a favourite. I also like Yung's in Dun Laoghaire and there's a good Chinese in Dalkey too.

There are four priests in the parish at the moment.

One of them is Polish and there is one Irish and one English. My nephew from Poland is staying in the presbytery with us at the moment but he's a lay person.

We have a cook but on Christmas Eve I'm going to do the cooking so that she can go home to her own family. We'll have a very traditional Polish meal that we'll serve around the time the first star appears in the sky. We start with borscht and then we'll have carp.

One of the local fish shops in Dun Laoghaire has said they'll get hold of one for me.

Later we'll get ready for the carol service at half past eight and the evening mass at nine. Midnight mass will be in Polish, last year there were about 100 people there.