Members of the Polish community and people working with migrant groups have played down recent media reports in Poland which portrayed Ireland as a living "hell" for migrant workers.
However, they acknowledged that a proportion of migrants did experience difficulties, often ending up jobless, homeless and at risk of psychiatric illness and drug dependency.
They also said the main problem facing migrants from accession states was the lack of a social welfare net, which is so restrictive that homeless hostels can be reluctant to accept them, with the only help available being a paid flight back to their country.
A report in the Polish edition of Newsweek warned that many of the estimated 100,000 Polish migrants were ending up suicidal and depressed because of their experiences here.
Diplomat Malgorzata Kozak, who works in the Polish embassy in Dublin and was quoted at length in the article, said she had been quoted out of context and that Newsweek had greatly exaggerated the problem. She said there were problems among the Polish community, but that they was not widespread.
"The majority of Polish people working in Ireland have settled in and are working well and plan to stay two, three, four years, even longer."
The embassy estimates that there are 100,000 Polish nationals living in Ireland, 67,000 of whom have PPS numbers and are therefore believed to be working. She said the embassy was aware of six suicides within the community this year. It was contacted by less than 12 people in the last year who had serious psychiatric difficulties. "I have to say that there may be other people who have had difficulties and we would not have been contacted by them," she said.
Ms Kozak said the main complaints from Polish citizens related to exploitation by employers over overtime, holidays and other basic workers' rights.
Philip Watt of the National Consultative Committee on Racism and Interculturalism said Polish and other migrants from the 10 EU accession countries were experiencing the same problems young Irish migrants to Britain and the US experienced in the 1980s. "There is a vulnerable minority, mainly young single men and, to a lesser extent, women," he said.
Groups working with homeless people such as Trust have also reported a marked increase in workers sleeping rough. The problem, according to Mr Watt, is that they have a certain amount of money to last them before they get a job and their first wages. If they run out of money there is no welfare net because of the "habitual residents" rule that a person has to be resident in the State for two years before they qualify.
Tomasz Lotocki, a translator who showed the journalist who wrote the Newsweek piece around Dublin, believes the article was "exaggerated", but that it provided a counterpoint to much of the coverage of Ireland and work opportunities here in the Polish media.
"They have been writing about Ireland in a bit too bright colours," he said.