Irish companies risk losing large numbers of immigrant staff to firms in other EU states if they fail to fully integrate foreign workers into their organisations, a businesswoman warned yesterday.
Lucy Gaffney, chairwoman of the National Action Plan Against Racism, said the business community was not doing enough to ensure foreign workers remain in Ireland.
Companies should open scholarship schemes and mentoring programmes to immigrant staff and provide opportunities for fast-tracked promotion, she said.
Addressing the Irish Management Institute (IMI) annual conference, Ms Gaffney said she had no substantial progress to report after she encouraged companies to take action at last year's conference.
"We have had no proactive involvement from companies seeking to engage with the National Action Plan Against Racism on how they can better support diversity in their workforce, and there has been no adoption of the theme of diversity across the corporate community as a whole."
She argued that it was for business to provide the missing piece in the "jigsaw" of measures to help new residents stabilise their position in Irish society.
If business did not play its part, immigrants would leave Ireland when other EU economies such as Germany open their borders to workers from the accession states. This posed a threat to the Irish economy because the 12 EU states that did not allow accession state workers into their economies in 2004 - when Ireland, Britain and Sweden opened their borders - would have to do so by 2011 at latest.
"Our rising economy has been fuelled by foreign workers. Our economic development cannot continue without this workforce and to lose them as quickly as they have come would have a very negative impact on our economy, but also on our society, which is being enriched through diversity," Ms Gaffney said.
"Unless these workers are integrated to become a stable part of our workforce, our community and our Irish identity, our economic development cannot and will not continue."
The most senior managers in companies should make a commitment to fully integrate their immigrant staff, she said. Business must also proactively recruit immigrants and be fully committed to celebrating and promoting diversity.
Ms Gaffney was speaking after publication of an IMI discussion paper on cultural diversity in the workplace. The paper, written by Deirdre Crowe, said the effective management of the influx of immigrant workers is of long-term strategic importance to Irish companies.
"Improving productivity, innovation and talent management are economic imperatives which are intrinsically interwoven," it said.
