Few accept the most recent census figure of 63,000 Polish immigrants, believing it to be up to three times higher, writes Ruadhán Mac Cormaicin his continuing series Migration and the reinvention of Ireland.
It's an overcast Sunday morning and the pealing bells of nearby Christ Church Cathedral usher the congregation through the doors of St Audoen's Catholic church on Dublin's High Street. Inside, the pews are full and the aisles so tightly packed that stragglers can hope to make it no further than the outer porch.
Some of the worshippers are middle-aged, but the crowd is mostly male and conspicuously young. Many have come alone, in jeans and runners, a backpack slung over the shoulder, but others are in couples. Near the door is a cavalcade of parked buggies attended by young parents kneeling like sentries on the cold tiles.
The queue at the confessional stretches all the way to the back of the church. Could any parish in Ireland boast a larger, younger and more pious assembly than this, the spiritual centre for the city's Polish Catholics?
St Audoen's, where a congregation that had been waning for decades has been restored and revitalised by the city's Poles, is a powerful reminder of the general capacity of even small-scale migration to upset the dynamic of long-standing social patterns. More specifically, though, it tells of the burgeoning social and cultural infrastructure that has arisen around the State's largest immigrant group of recent years.
According to last year's census, details of which were released last month, some 63,000 Polish nationals live in the State. But tell that to a Pole and wait for the guffaw.
"Do you believe that?" asks Barnaba Dorda, an organiser with Siptu. "Of course not. For example, between January and February this year, they issued 8,500 PPS numbers and there are others who don't have a job. I would say that in every pub, every hotel in Ireland, there is at least one Polish person working . . . In Dublin, I walk down Talbot Street and I feel like I'm on the Chorzewska, the biggest street in Katowice."
Most believe the true figure to be at least twice and possibly three times higher than the total quoted in last year's head count.
The gender imbalance at St Audoen's is representative of a broader pattern: according to the census, there are twice as many Polish men as women living here. They are spread across the country, with most concentrated in the larger urban centres, but there are contingents in most counties where work can be found.
There's an old joke about the Poles, says Anna Pa
Already there are at least seven Polish newspapers and magazines being published here, spanning the gamut of interests one would expect from such a diverse community. What medium-sized Irish town does not have a Polish shop? At least seven airlines offer scheduled flights on 32 routes between Ireland and Poland, pointing to the constant flows of people between the two countries.
Does it make any sense to talk of a Polish community when the group it seeks to designate is so manifestly diverse, ranging from rural mechanics and labourers to bankers, architects and actors? Although Polish emigration cuts across social lines, the majority in Ireland are young, educated and mobile, recent university graduates or those who worked for a few years in Poland before deciding to emigrate. They are more likely to speak good English and, though some are here only for a few months, others intend to stay indefinitely.
Polski Expressclearly targets this group. When the paper commissioned some market research last year, it found that 60 per cent of Poles living in Ireland were between 20 and 35 years of age. " Polski Expressis aimed at readers who are young, well-educated, pretty settled here," says Pas. "They have good jobs, they are happy with their life here, they go out, they spend time and money on culture, going to the cinema. They're open-minded - willing to meet people from other cultures."
Pas is among their number: after graduating two years ago with a degree in philosophy, she came to Ireland thinking it would be a good place to start her career. She worked as a waitress for a few months and freelanced for the Polska Gazeta before setting up the Expresswith two friends.
Others are older and have come here after being left behind by the economic growth that took place in Poland in the 1990s. In this category there are lower levels of education and less proficiency in English.
Although there is scant official data on Ireland's Poles, studies on those who went to Britain since EU accession in 2004 suggest trends similar to those observed anecdotally in Ireland. A British Home Office report published last year found that eight out of 10 Polish immigrants had not reached the age of 32. Most were single - only 3 per cent moved to Britain with families.
Like other migrant groups in the rich world, many Poles take jobs - in the service industry, mostly - that Irish workers don't care for any more. Because a waiter's wage here could be higher than that of a professional back home, we have physiotherapists applying make-up in beauty salons, women with masters degrees in chemistry working as security guards and computer programmers pulling pints.
"It's such a waste," says Magdalena Sobczak, who lives with her husband in north Dublin. "Imagine how you would feel: you've studied in college, you have all these ambitions. You have spent all this time and energy on educating yourself, and then you don't have a job so you end up in Ireland doing menial, tiring jobs."
Sobczak, who has a masters degree from the University Of Warsaw, was drawn to Ireland, not out of economic necessity but by a fascination with the country's culture that could be traced back to a Sinéad O'Connor- inspired crew-cut in her teens.
After working in Poland for a few years, Sobczak and her husband decided to fulfil a long-standing dream and move abroad. He landed a contract with an IT company in Cork, so they packed their belongings into an old Peugeot, crossed the continent and took the ferry to Ireland. Initially, she was shocked by the size of the Polish community in which she found herself, Sobczak recalls.
"When I came to Cork I was walking on the street and I heard Polish all the time, and I was really shocked . . . and people were asking me, where are you from? I'd say, I'm from Poland. And they had this strange look on their face, and I felt 'this is not right'. I had this perception - I don't know if it was the correct one or not - that people were overwhelmed with what was happening, that there's so many people arriving here, and what's happening?"
She adds: "In the beginning it was a bit tough for me. I was a bit depressed with the whole thing - being in a new place where you didn't know anybody, and you have to start from scratch really."
She found a job with an insurance company and from there enrolled in a journalism masters that led to a regular column with a local paper. Although the couple liked Cork, they were tempted by the security of Dublin's bigger job market and moved to the capital after a year. Today, Sobczak writes Metro Éireann's Polish page and has just started work as a press officer for Enterprise Ireland.
She is pleased by how things have worked out and speaks enthusiastically of her plans to build a life here. While removing herself from Poland has helped to crystallise her sense of identity, she is comfortable in Ireland and revels in an atmosphere she feels offers the chance to have potential fulfilled.
"I think Ireland at the moment is a fascinating place to be," she says. "It's a country that's forming. Everything is changing because it's opening itself. I think to a large extent it's up to you to determine where you're going to be, what you're going to do and how you want to work towards it. Maybe I'm brainwashed by the American way," she adds laughing, "but I do believe that if you work and have a goal and you're focused and persistent, everything can come true."
Despite the successes of some, however, there is evidence that for others the migrant's experience is one of hardship. For those who come to Ireland with no savings and no English, the struggle to find work can bring unbearable strain.
The Homeless Agency, which co-ordinates services for the homeless in Dublin, has reported a significant increase in the number of central Europeans availing of its services, while the Polish embassy estimated last year that up to 600 of its citizens may be availing of services for homeless people.
For many who do find work, exploitation is a theme that recurs. Six months ago, Barnaba Dorda, who is from Silesia in southern Poland, was taking 20 calls a day from compatriots "in trouble" in the workplace. "Now it's down to five or six calls a day," he says, "but behind every one guy who calls, there may be 20 or 30 who are exploited."
Such can be the desperation for work that the classified pages of Irish-based Polish newspapers and websites have become sites of informal job-trading, where the seller often passes on his job to a compatriot for a fee.
One newly arrived worker recently placed a notice in one Dublin-based paper offering €1,000 to anyone who could find him work on a building site. Another posted a note on a Polish website to say he was quitting his gardening job near Dublin and asked if anyone wanted it. It was a good job and the first taker could have if for free. Rest assured, he wrote - the employer was a good man. "You don't have to know anything," he added.