Tourists and business people from 16 countries - including China, India and Russia - will be able to enter Ireland without a visa from tomorrow morning if they already have a valid British visa.
Under the Government's short-stay visa waiver programme, visitors from the participating states will be able to stay in Ireland for a maximum of 90 days.
Nationals of those states, who are long term residents of Britain, will still have to obtain a visa to travel to the Republic. But their visa fees will be waived as part of the programme.
Taoiseach Enda Kenny, who launched the programme today in Dublin, said the "innovative package" of measures would encourage more tourists from new markets to travel to Ireland.
He said it was a very timely initiative as the scheme would cover the time period during which the London Olympics will be held. He said the trade-off in economic terms for relaxing Ireland's immigration controls should be a significant increase in visitor numbers.
"By definition it will lead to us opening up our immigration checks to some extent but I am greatly heartened that the visitors coming here will already have been cleared by the UK authorities," said Mr Kenny.
The visa waiver programme includes nationals of: Belarus; Montenegro; Russia; Serbia; Turkey; Ukraine; Bahrain; Kuwait; Oman; Qatar; Saudi Arabia; the United Arab Emirates; India; Kazakhstan; China and Uzebekistan.
The programme will run as a pilot scheme until the end of October 2012 but it may be amended or expanded at any point depending on the results.
Minister for Justice Alan Shatter said he was anticipating that the programme would become permanent.