Foreign investment

Karolina Nawrol came to Ireland from Poland two years ago. She found a job and a place to stay and thought she would live happily ever after - or at least for a few years.

Unfortunately Nawrol (27), like many other migrant workers, felt she was being exploited in her job and left. The same thing happened in the second position she took and only now - after two years - does she have the language skills and the local knowledge to find out what her rights are.

"When I came to Ireland there was no place I could go to learn about Ireland or to get all the information I required to get on here," she says. Like many other migrant workers, she was forced to work weekends and overtime or risk losing her job. "It was difficult."

Narwol's experience isn't unique, but for foreign nationals arriving in Ireland today, things are easier. There are now several networks designed to provide precisely the information that would have helped Nawrol when she arrived in Ireland.

There are newspapers exclusively for these communities and, this weekend, there is a special exhibition at the RDS in Ballsbridge, Dublin, aimed at helping the so-called new communities to progress and improve their lives in Ireland.

Christine Donaghy, managing director of Vaveeva.com, a multilingual website that provides advice and information to non-Irish nationals and is behind this weekend's New Communities Expo, says the needs of migrants in Ireland have changed.

She says it is important that this change is addressed if the situation is to work to the advantage of both the Irish economy and the migrants themselves.

"It's no longer just about just trying to survive here," she says. "These people want to prosper.

"Before they arrive they need to know how to find a job and where to stay. After that, once they have been here for a while, they have a different set of needs, such as how to get a better job, how to get their qualifications recognised by Irish employers and how they can receive further training and education."

Donaghy is not the only one who is excited about the opportunities offered by this weekend's exhibition. More than 80 groups are planning to take a stall at the event, which, Donaghy says, may be attended by anything from 5,000 to 50,000 people.

"This is the first time anything like this has been done, so we don't know what the response will be," she says, adding that Vaveeva.com has conducted an extensive marketing campaign around Dublin, on public transport and in every ethnic publication.

One group that is hoping to benefit from the event is recruiters.

According to Huw Taylor, general manager at jobs.ie, Irish employers are starting to recognise the hardworking tendencies of migrant workers and some companies even prefer foreign nationals to Irish workers.

"Where in the past employers only sought migrant workers for retail and hospitality work, they are now taking them on for professional positions," says Taylor. "There has been a definite change over the past few years."

A change has also been evident in the type of people searching for positions on the jobs.ie website. According to Taylor, a huge amount of traffic now comes from foreign nationals, though he is unable to give precise details as users of the website are not required to give their nationality when registering.

"It's quite an important community for us," he says, adding that about 15 per cent of the website's traffic comes from outside Ireland - ie migrants who haven't yet left their home country.

"There is a definite shortage in a lot of areas of the Irish workforce and as a result foreign nationals are a crucial audience."

The experience has been the same for Olivia Farrelly, office manager of the Blanchardstown branch of Multiflex, the industrial, manufacturing and warehousing division of Dublin- and London-listed recruiter CPL.

"The arrival of so many Poles, Slovenians and Slovakians in Ireland has been great for our business," she says. She adds that currently she is probably placing more foreign nationals in jobs than Irish people.

Farrelly is also quick to point out that many of these migrant workers are overqualified for the positions they are in and, having initially taken a job just to get work, are now interested in moving into a profession where they can make use of their skills and qualifications.

This is where Donaghy hopes the New Communities Expo will play its part.

As well as giving foreign nationals the chance to learn more about Ireland, it will also give employers the chance to see what skills are available in the migrant communities and consider how they could benefit their own business.

For the migrants, there will be everything from seminars on personal finance and setting up your own business through to Irish dancing demonstrations and craft stalls.

The unemployment rate has remained static at 4.4 per cent. The official Central Statistics Office figures show that by April 2006 there were 420,000 people resident here who were not Irish nationals - 200,000 more than four years earlier. Thus there is no doubt that migrant workers are a group that should not be ignored.

In fact, Minister of State for integration Conor Lenihan recently admitted that the number of foreign nationals living in Ireland is probably higher - more like between 13 and 15 per cent of the population - meaning that employers are missing out on a significant amount of hardworking potential if they fail to adapt to this change.

More information can be found at www.vaveeva.com/expo