Poles polish up their passports for a return home

Polish fund administrators have helped stave off Ireland's talent shortage. Now it seems they might leave the country high and dry.

There was an influx of Poles into the Irish funds sector last year, and they are now the biggest ethnic minority group in the country as a whole - numbering 200,000.

But a rapidly changing financial services picture in Poland over the past two years - Citi, State Street and UBS all now have a fund administration presence there - means there are opportunities at home for the well-educated workforce.

And what's more, funds sector workers currently working in Ireland are highly sought after.

Christopher Hume, managing director of Anglo Euro Resourcing, a firm that specialises in relocating qualified Central and Eastern European financial services staff working in the UK and Ireland back to CEE, says: "After a couple of years working in Ireland, the skills they have developed means they are at the top end of the market in Poland. And now, when the market is growing in their home country, they're in a position to be premium candidates."

Susan Cox, managing director of Coxfitzsimons&wilkes - a recruitment firm with offices in Dublin and Warsaw - is currently recruiting for US investment firm PFPC's new Polish office, and is only tapping local talent.

The good news for Irish fund administrators fearing a net outflow of their Polish staff is that once in Dublin, Poles appear unwilling to go back home.

Cox says she was open to recruiting Polish candidates in Ireland, but they were less enthusiastic than she anticipated: "They've been here two or three years, and it might be too early to go back. There's also a big salary differential."

However, Hume says salaries are increasing fast: "If they understand the way the market is going, they will see greater opportunities, and the salaries are increasing at a much faster rate than they were two years ago."

Cox adds that the rapidly expanding financial market in Poland has seen greater geographical spread - whereas jobs were once confined to Warsaw - which may be a further incentive to stay at home.

However, with a population of 38m, an increasing interest in financial services posts and job-hungry candidates brandishing a Masters degree that takes five years to get, perhaps Ireland won't be struggling for Polish candidates just yet.