Ms Ela Bazan is part of a growing Polish population of about 5,000 people working in the Republic. The 27-year-old hotel receptionist works in Dooley's Hotel in Waterford and has been in the State for three years.

"Accession for me will mean free travel within the EU and I won't have to worry about crossing borders," she says. "It will mean that Poles won't feel like second-class citizens when they travel within Europe."

Until now Ms Bazan has applied for a work permit every year to continue working in the State but, from tomorrow, this bureaucracy will be swept aside as Poland enters the EU.

Without the requirement for a work permit, Ms Bazan will also be free to move employer for the first time in three years, although she says she is very happy with her current employer.

The new rules apply equally to citizens from all 10 EU accession states, who will for the first time gain the right to employment in the Republic and Britain without holding a work permit.

Ireland and Britain are the only EU member-states that have extended full working rights to people coming from these countries. All the other EU members have retained some sort of restrictions on the movement of labour, many citing fears that cheap labour from the accession states will flood their job markets and hike up unemployment rates.

Assessing how many workers from the 10 accession states are planning to come and work in the Republic is very difficult and will vary considerably depending on the individual accession state.

Grafton Recruitment, the Irish employment agency which has expanded into Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, estimates that up to 15,000 workers living in accession states will seek employment in the State in the year following accession.

Mr Niall Keyes, head of Grafton Recruitment's Czech office, says large numbers of workers will try to attain jobs in the Republic from certain countries, particularly Poland and Slovakia, due to their generally weak current economic conditions.

The two states suffer unemployment rates of 20 per cent and 14 per cent respectively - the worst of all the accession states. There are also indications that interest in travel is growing in Poland and Slovakia.

Last week Grafton's Polish office recorded 90,000 inquiries about gaining work in Britain and Ireland - a figure that will provoke fear among Irish workers that they could see greater competition for jobs in the future.

However, Mr Keyes says such fears are vastly overstated. "There is a worry in Ireland that the country will be flooded with cheap labour. This isn't so, rather workers from accession states will absorb a shortfall in available labour that already exists."

The Republic's low unemployment rate of 4.4 per cent means that migration from accession states should boost the economy rather than pose a threat to its competitiveness.

This was acknowledged by the Government last year when it announced special preferences for personnel applying for permits from accession countries. In 2003, more than one-third of all work permits granted by the Government, some 16,606, went to citizens of the accession states.

At the time, the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Ms Harney, said EU accession would enable Irish employers to find the great majority of their personnel needs, thus obviating the need for work permits.

A Government spokeswoman yesterday stressed that EU accession represented a real opportunity for Irish companies.

Irish firms and public bodies currently employ more than 45,000 people from outside the EU in a range of sectors, such as farming, carers, construction, technology and manufacturing.

There have been consistent complaints from firms that the work permit process is excessively bureaucratic and has slowed their business expansion.

"The whole process is very much tied up in bureaucracy. We have found that, as well as the basic form filling, trying to contact people in the relevant government offices has been very difficult," says Mr Nick Groom, human resources manager at Sligo-based company G Bruss.

G Bruss, which supplies components to automotive firms, has 10 Poles and several Brazilians among its 310-strong workforce. It is seeking to recruit a further 20 Polish workers and will concentrate future recruitment efforts in accession states so permits are not needed, he says.

However, doubts persist about whether the expected flood of workers from accession states will materialise. Despite higher wages on offer in the Republic, quality of life in many accession states, such as Slovenia and the Czech Republic, is very high.

A recent British Home Office report suggests that net immigration to Britain up to 2010 will be 5,000-13,000 people. Even in the worst-case scenario, migration to the UK as a result of enlargement is not likely to be overly large, says the report, The impact of EU enlargement on migration flows.

The Centre for Economic Policy Research has even suggested that Germany and Austria should open their labour markets to migration to encourage certain skilled workers to relocate to their economies. This would have the effect of reducing wages in these sectors to encourage greater innovation.

Sitting in a trendy Warsaw bar, Ms Marta Jozwiak, a 26-year-old marketing manager, doubts whether there will be any influx of Poles to the EU. She says few, if any, of her friends are planning to travel and find work abroad despite the significantly higher wages on offer in the EU.

"One area which could see some young people moving from Poland to other countries is healthcare, where nurses and doctors earn very low pay at home," says Ms Jozwiak, who like many Poles speaks fluent English.

Her friend, Mr Przemek Staniszewski (27), says the decision by Poland's neighbour, Germany, which already hosts thousands of Polish workers, has bitterly disappointed some people.

This sentiment is shared by young people and politicians throughout central and eastern Europe.

"We are absolutely sure there is no economic justification for this. It's not about economy, its more about principle," the Prague Post quoted the Polish EU commissioner designate Ms Danuta Hubner as saying.

Some countries, such as Hungary, have even threatened to retaliate against citizens of EU states that impose labour restrictions. The Republic may actually generate goodwill from opening up its labour market.