Irish employers are recruiting foreign workers with specialist skills to compensate for a shortfall in the information technology and banking sectors, writes Claire Shoesmith

Ben Frewin, a London-based accountant, travels from London to Copenhagen on a weekly basis to fill a skills gap in the Danish employment market. Unable to find an appropriately qualified candidate locally to carry out the job, his employer, Shell, has resorted to sourcing workers from overseas. This is not a phenomenon associated only with Denmark, which has a population of almost five and a half million people.

"We have started having to look overseas to fill some positions," says Niamh O'Brien, development manager at Irish Recruitment Consultants, which places candidates in positions ranging from junior secretaries right through to company managers.

Over the past six months, the group has started to advertise on European job websites on a more frequent basis in search of the right candidates to fill positions, particularly in the banking and information technology sectors.

In many cases companies are prepared to fly people over for interviews and offer generous relocation packages if a candidate has the right skills.

"There is definitely a struggle to find good candidates," says O'Brien, adding that where once the skills shortage was confined to certain areas of the banking sector, it is now right across the board.

"It's a tight market, and if a client is looking for someone with particular experience or expertise, they will have to look hard to find them."

In an attempt to overcome this issue, many Irish employers are hiring non-Irish nationals, according to Rory Brennan, director of the People Group, a Dublin-based recruitment consultancy that focuses on sales and marketing positions.

About 5 per cent of the people that the group places in marketing positions are non-Irish nationals, with the majority being from Poland and the Czech Republic, according to Brennan. This compares with about 1 per cent two years ago.

Companies are also becoming increasingly happy to take on non-Irish nationals at the same level as Irish nationals, says Brennan. Three years ago, it was a struggle to get a non-Irish national taken on at the level to which they were qualified, and they were generally given positions that were below their skills base, he says.

However, this has changed, and provided that they have worked at companies known in Ireland, there is no problem with taking them on.

"There are a lot of multinational companies based in both Poland and the Czech Republic and so the candidates have excellent business English and very transferable skills," says Brennan, adding that the situation isn't the same for sales-related jobs.

"For sales positions, it's more a case of what contacts you have, so non-Irish nationals don't fare as well as people with a local background."

The general consensus that the Irish employment market is buoyant is also attracting more foreign workers to the country, according to O'Brien. As many as 70,000 people entered the Republic in the 12 months to April, according to the latest figures from the Central Statistics Office (CSO), reversing the State's trend of emigration.

Some forecasts suggest that without an increased influx of so-called migrant workers, the economy will struggle to remain as buoyant as it is now. With employment at levels not seen for years, the economy is struggling to attract enough staff.

A report released last month by Forfás and the expert group on future skills needs said that Europe alone would not be able to fulfil the Republic's requirement for highly skilled workers in the future. Figures released last week by the CSO showed that the number of people signing on the register for the unemployed, known as the live register, fell 5,382, or 3.8 per cent, to 149,644 in the year to October 2005. This compares with a decrease of 7,131, or 4.4 per cent, in the year to September 2005.

The standard rate of unemployment in October was 4.4 per cent, according to the CSO, a number that Eurostat, the European Union's statistics body, says is the lowest rate of unemployment in the 25 EU member countries.

However, it is important to note that the live register is not necessarily a measure of the number of people out of work because it includes unemployed people and part-time and casual workers.

According to the latest unemployment figures from the Quarterly National Household Survey, the unemployment rate was 4.3 per cent in April. Moreover, a separate report released earlier this week attributes the first increase in Irish rents in two years to a surge in employment.

The increase in employment and a rise in the number of people coming to work in the country are driving up the cost of rental accommodation, the Bank of Ireland said in the report. Rents have increased by 2 per cent this year, reversing the declines seen over the past two years, according to the bank.

The bank's economist, Dr Dan McLaughlin, said significant growth in household income and soaring numbers of immigrants had pushed demand for housing ahead of forecasts, meaning the 75,000 new homes expected to be built this year may not be enough.

So while there may not be a home for these new workers to live in, provided they have the necessary skills, they shouldn't have trouble finding a job.