Most managers believe foreign workers are more productive than their Irish counterparts, according to a survey published today.
The survey found 75 per cent of human resource executives feel the influx of immigrant staff is positive, while 51 per cent said they were more productive.
More than 40 per cent said the lack of applications from Irish workers was the main reason for hiring foreigners, while 30 per cent said that foreign workers were more reliable and enthusiastic.
Gerard O'Neill, chief executive of Amarach Consulting, which carried out the poll, told an employers' conference in Dublin that in the case of companies which have employed foreign workers, only 16 per cent of respondents said that lower cost was a factor in hiring non-nationals.
"This might make people think twice about using pejorative phrases like 'race to the bottom' when they talk about non-nationals in the workforce," he said.
Some 57 per cent of all HR managers surveyed - split equally between companies who did and who didn't employ foreign workers at present - said they intended to employ more foreign nationals in the next year.
A small majority of respondents, 52 per cent, favour more liberal work permit laws while 49 per cent believe that nationals of countries such as Romania and Bulgaria should enjoy the same freedom to work in Ireland when they join the EU in 2007.
The Amarach survey shows the dramatic shift in the immigrant composition of the Irish workforce over the past 20 years. In the 1986-1991 period, just over 13 per cent of non-nationals in the workforce came from EU countries other than Ireland; now that figure is almost 28 per cent.
Over the same period, the proportion of British workers in the non-national workforce has more than halved to 25 per cent, the proportion of workers from the United States has fallen from 14 per cent to less than 9 per cent, while the proportion from the rest of the world has almost doubled to more than 38 per cent.