"Jobless Irish flown to Holland by private jet" thundered a Dutch newspaper headline yesterday, summing up astonishment that hundreds of Irish people are being offered, among other perks, four free air tickets home a year.
The other perks include excursions and social evenings, cheap accommodation and attractive wages for doing work the Dutch themselves are turning down.
Irish people flown in by private jet from Knock and willing to take the heat and hard work demanded in Dutch steel factories were described as heaven-sent by employers troubled by severe labour shortages in the southern province of Brabant.
More than 250 more from Ireland are expected in the coming months to fill vacancies in the area.
Thousands of unemployed Dutch people were unwilling to take the work. One state employment source was quoted as saying: "We Dutch don't like to get our hands dirty. As a nation we are spoilt by a social system allowing us to earn as much by staying at home and doing nothing."
The chronic shortage of Dutch labour is mainly in the steel industry for fixers and metal fabricators, and elsewhere for forklift drivers, assistants in slaughterhouses, skilled and unskilled construction work and hotel staff.
Irish electricians, welders, bricklayers and other trades-people are even more in demand because of a chronic shortage of Dutch-born tradesmen, according to the private Dutch employment bureau which scoured the midlands and west of Ireland in search of labour.
The bureau DA & A, based in the city of Helmond near the Dutch-German border, launched a recruitment drive under the banner "Have the guts to go Dutch" in Ireland late last year.
Snobbery about blue-collar jobs in the Netherlands has led many young people to ignore trades, preferring lower-paid but cleaner jobs in offices and retailing, and creating shortages across heavy industry, the regional Dutch state employment service reported.
According to a Dutch-based Irish consultant for the DA & A bureau, the availability of young Irishmen - from Athlone, Castlebar, Moate, Tullamore, Belmullet and elsewhere - has been an answer to a prayer for Dutch industries crying out for labour.
"We have over 100 more Irish people on our database and expect to bring most of them to Holland shortly. Demand from Dutch employers is so enormous that we have to go back to Ireland to do further recruiting later this month," Mrs Joan Munnich-Keegan said.
One of the first to step off the private jet from Knock, Mr David Rogers from Tullamore, immediately set to work as a metal fixer in a foundry at Gelderop. He told Dutch TV news: "It is hard work but no different from home, except the money is better and I always wanted to visit Holland."