"Poles are motivated by desperation for jobs and money and providing a good life for their families," says Stella Pedziwiatr (25), a recruitment consultant with a sociology degree.
"In Poland, you typically earn 200 per month and after paying rent you have €50 to live on."
In Dublin for the past four years, Pedziwiatr is financially supporting her mother, who is an invalid in the family home in Szczecin, north-west Poland, close to the German border.
One of five children, she is also helping one of her three brothers through university in Poland. Her father died 10 years ago.
Pedziwiatr started out as an au pair, changed to more lucrative work waitressing, then became a restaurant manager and eventually got a job as a recruitment consultant. "If you work hard, people appreciate you and they treat you well," she says.
While she's a relatively high earner, she has been attracted to live in Dublin by more than money.
"Irish women are more independent and fun-loving. In Poland, women in their 20s are already married with responsibilities. Poles are very serious and there is no small-talk. All they talk about mainly is work. Here, no one speaks about work in their time off."
Life in Poland is very hard, so people are understandably always complaining, she says. Jealousy - what the Irish would call begrudgery - is always on the agenda there.
"In Poland, your best friend feels in competition with you. He or she wants to know what your 'connections' are. It can be cut-throat.
"Here, in Dublin, people help each other out. There's a lot of networking."
The relationship between employer and employee is one of master and servant in Poland, she adds. "We call it 'power distance' in Poland. In Ireland, we are all on a level and that's why the Polish like it here."
Status-conscious Poles also tend to be pessimistic, another reason Stella enjoys the company of Irish friends, although her boyfriend is Russian.
"The Irish are open, optimistic and interested in you. In Poland, if you smile and say 'good morning' people are suspicious and paranoid about it. I'm hoping that as the economy improves in Poland, the Polish will become more like the Irish," she says.
Growing up in Poland in the 1980s, Pedziwiatr was always aware of "the big eye" watching over everyone and, especially, of being controlled in school.
Her generation finds it a relief to shake this off, but older Poles find change difficult, she has found.
Relations between people are made more strained by the lack of stability in Poland, so that many people of her parents' generation are looking back nostalgically at communism as a time when individuals did not have to make decisions.
"Being aware of choices and being prepared to make the right choices is such a new concept that the older generation find it frightening," Pedziwiatr says.
She predicts that as the younger generation experience life and work in western Europe, they will bring new attitudes home with them, which - combined with a growing economy - will eventually transform Polish attitudes.