33% of Poles may return home

A THIRD of Polish workers in Ireland may return home over the next year as Poland takes up its position as one of Europe's fastest-growing economies, according to Ireland's largest recruitment company, CPL.

As the Irish recession takes hold and the banking sector is left reeling from the credit crunch and the collapse of the housing market, senior Irish financial services employees are also lining up to find jobs in Poland, said CPL.

In survey of more than 500 Polish workers in Ireland, a third said they were planning to leave Ireland in the next 12 months, with money the main reason for their return home. A further 13 per cent said they would leave Ireland within two years.

Agnieszka Walter, CPL's country manager for Poland, said a change in Polish tax laws that means personal tax rates won't exceed 32 per cent was another factor that has led to a sudden exodus of Polish migrants. Up to 66,000 of the estimated 200,000-plus Poles in Ireland could leave in 2009, CPL said.

Although wage rates are not as high as they are in Ireland, the cost of living in Poland can be up to 50 per cent cheaper, Ms Walter said.

The publicly quoted recruitment company said it had more than 450 high-end vacancies in Poland at the moment, with jobs available in sectors such as financial services, engineering, architecture and IT.

"CPL had initially attracted many highly skilled people to Ireland when there was a labour shortage here, so as things slow down here we have many of the same people approaching us to see what job conditions were like back home in Poland," said Ms Walter.

The recruitment firm, which opened an office in Warsaw in 2006, has now opened a second Polish office in Krakow.

But one of the most "surprising" trends has been separate expressions of interest from a handful of "relatively senior" Irish bankers now looking for senior banking positions in Poland.

The good news for these jobseekers is that the Polish financial sector, dominated by banks with strong deposit bases, has proved to be resilient to the global financial crisis to date. An ability to speak Polish is not a necessity, according to Ms Walter.

The wages gap is also closing. "Polish salaries have been going up over the past year and it looks like they will continue to go up," she said.

Ms Walter said that optimism had returned to the country, which suffered from high unemployment at a time when the Irish economy was still booming.

"Poland looks like it will have one of Europe's fastest growing economies, which is great. So fingers crossed," she said.

As recently as 2005, the Polish unemployment rate was 17.8 per cent, but this has now fallen to 7.3 per cent. This rate, which is lower than the 7.8 per cent Irish unemployment rate estimated by the Central Statistics Office, is not expected to increase significantly next year, despite the Europe-wide economic gloom.

The majority of surveyed Polish workers who said they planned to return home expected to find a job within three months.

The European Commission's forecasts show Poland's economy will grow by 3.8 per cent in 2009 and 4.2 per cent in 2010 after growth of 5.4 per cent in its gross domestic product this year. Only Romania, Slovakia and Bulgaria will enjoy higher growth in 2009.