Last week a Co Louth beef farmer, Mr Raymond O'Malley, was in a meat plant operated by the second-largest processor in Ireland. "I noticed that the warning signs were written in six different languages. I inquired and was told that this was necessary because of the diversity of the workforce," he said.

It has emerged this week that in response to a request from meat plants, the Tanaiste, Ms Harney, has relaxed the rules to allow them to find workers from outside the EU.

IBEC, the employers' federation, made the request following a report it compiled on the needs of the meat-processing industry which said that in order to support the £2 billion industry, this would have to be done.

"The employers had targeted workers from Romania who were willing to work here if they could get visas to come in. However, these were very restrictive and we asked for changes," said Mr Kieran Fitzgerald, who heads the food and drinks sector of IBEC.

"We asked the Minister to fast-track the procedure, and I understand this was done and it has eased some of the pressure on the plants which were seeking workers," he said.

Mr Fitzgerald said young people were taking up jobs which were less strenuous, and the industry did not appear to have a good profile with school-leavers or fully qualified people.

"We have put forward a plan to the sector that it put a career structure in place similar to that in the catering industry in an effort to put a long-term solution in place," he said. "We have put together another package to train the trainers, if you like, a programme called ADAPT which we put in place on a pilot basis with the aid of the EU."

A spokesman for the Irish Meat Association said it was not easy to find young people to work in meat plants now that other work was available. "It is particularly difficult along the east coast where the construction industry is attracting people who would traditionally be available to us. IT and other industries are in direct competition with us now."

The sector employs 10,000 people, about 5,000 in the beef and sheep sector, 2,000 in pigmeat and 3,000 in poultry and processing. "The job is a difficult and demanding one for the workers who now have the opportunity to work in plants where there are no shifts and no intense peaks in production like we have in meat plants," he said.

Mr O'Malley, who is chairman of the Irish Farmers' Association livestock committee and has extensive contact with meat plants around the State, said he was aware that workers from eastern Europe were working in plants in Cavan, Meath and Kildare.

"The meat factories tell me that their plants can only operate at 75 per cent efficiency because of the labour shortage and an increased demand for product, especially since the dioxin crisis in Belgium," he said.

He said he was aware that one executive in a major meat chain had gone out to Latin America to seek staff for the Irish plants and that others had gone to Australia. "My understanding from the processors is that they will take labour from wherever they can get it. They know that if they sack a man from their plants any morning, that man will be employed elsewhere by 4 o'clock in the afternoon," said Mr O'Malley.

Meanwhile the shortage of labour inside the farm gate is causing serious concern to planners looking to the future of agriculture in the coming decade. Earlier this week in a paper prepared for the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Prof Seamus Sheehy said he would not be surprised if the availability of labour in rural areas did not drop by 5 per cent annually.

This was one of the greatest problems facing the sector and would become more acute as more farmers left the land or found part-time work off their farms.

The Farm Relief Service has been experiencing great difficulties in finding people to work on land. There was a prediction earlier this month in Wexford that the commercial soft fruit industry could go into decline if the labour problem was not addressed.

One of Ireland's top dairy farmers, Mr Tom Clinton from Co Meath, confirmed this week that he was investing in a robotic milking system for his 160-strong dairy herd. The former IFA president said the machine, which milks cows on demand for 22 hours a day, would reduce the amount of time spent milking the herd and would free up labour on the farm.

A leading agricultural technology expert, Mr Eddie O'Callaghan, who is based in the Moorepark Dairy Research Centre in Fermoy, Co Cork, said farmers would have to turn increasingly to technology to resolve the labour problems. "The lack of labour is a major headache, especially in the dairy industry, and our biggest farmers will have to use whatever methods they can to combat this."

He looked at a number of robotic milking systems and found them efficient but expensive at an estimated £100,000 for a 60-cow unit. He felt they had application here where animals were housed and not out on pasture.

In the US, the large dairy herds are concentrated in the southern states where most of the milking is carried out by migrant workers from Mexico.