"I'm calling for anybody who is living in the State and who can't afford to pay for themselves to be deported after three months. We are borrowing €400 million per week to maintain our own residents and we can't afford it," the outspoken politician said this Wednesday.

"During the good times it was grand but we can't afford the current situation unless the EU is willing to step in and pay for non-nationals," he said

The president of the Irish-Polish Cultural and Business Association, Pat O'Sullivan, has called on the Mayor to withdraw his comments. "I am shocked, I am taken aback by those comments and it is shocking and dangerous talk," he said.

"EU nationals have a legal right to be here and calling for them to be deported shows an extraordinary lack of understanding of our place in Europe and how the world views us as a people," he added.

Mayor Kiely has denied his comments amount to racism.

"I'm not racist but it is very simple, we can't continue to borrow €400 million a week and the Government has to pull a halt and say enough is enough unless the EU intervenes and pays some sort of a subvention," he insisted.