LATVIAN carpenters working in Sligo and Spanish waiters serving in Dublin hotels are just two examples of the way in which rapidly increasing levels of European labour mobility are beginning to affect the Irish economy.
The Latvian carpenters are here because of chronic skill shortages in the construction industry, while Spanish waiters are willing to work for rates that don't interest Irish workers. For some, the changes represent an opportunity others see them as a threat.
Later today about 200 Irish Ferries employees will be marching to the Dail to protest at plans to lay them off during the winter months, despite the fact that the company is commissioning new vessels. They fear that part of a hidden agenda is to replace them with cheaper crews from eastern Europe.
Two hundred miles away in Killarney 600 delegates will be gathering for the inaugural conference of Eures (the European Employment Service) to discuss ways of making labour more mobile while protecting workers' basic living standards.
They represent trade unions, employer bodies, academic institutions and State agencies such as FAS, which won the contract to organise the event. Agencies from 17 countries, inside and outside the EU, will be represented.
The director general of FAS, Mr John Lynch, says that accelerating globalisation of the labour market makes increased mobility of labour inevitable. "If Europe wants to compete, Europe needs to ensure its people are free to travel and bring their special skills to other member states.
"We have an example in the US, where young graduates are ready to pack their bags and head thousands of miles across their continent to take jobs in other states. We need to foster the same sense of easy mobility amongst our young people and ensure they have the organisational back up to do so as easily as possible.
"At the same time we must ensure that they maximise their skills and potential opportunities. We must also ensure that our employers have first class recruitment services at their disposal.
"Mobility of labour allows us to tackle the twin evils of regional unemployment, with its waste of human potential on the one hand, and crippling skill shortages leading to market distortions and lost business on the other.
"In addition, Europe can only benefit culturally from easy integration of its people, and its people can only benefit from immersion in the richness of Europe's vast cultural heritage," he said.
The conference will examine where the skills shortages are and how to provide information services which match workers to potential employers and ensure that the workers concerned have corn parable training and qualifications. It will also be promoting Eures as the primary vehicle for achieving these objectives.
SIPTU official Mr Norman Croke has claimed that, if it were not for access to cheap labour from other EU states, management at the hotel would have had to negotiate with the union long ago over better pay. Management, for its part, has not denied recruiting staff from other EU states and points out that it is perfectly entitled to do so.
Certainly the social aspects of labour mobility have been neglected in EU legislation. The Eures conference will be looking at the problem in one of its workshops. However, its remit is to improve co ordination of social security systems rather than reform them.
It remains to be seen how far the delegates in Killarney can go in humanising "European mobility" as opposed to simply increasing its efficiency.