Many Polish people living in Ireland expect there will be a significant increase in numbers applying to receive childcare payments as a result of publicity about the entitlement.
Magdalema Kierdelewicz, of the Polish Information Centre, said many migrant workers did not know they were able to claim such benefits as a result of welfare restrictions for workers from accession states.
"I think it has come as a surprise, because so far the official information about it was that as long as the habitual residency condition test was in Irish law, there was no benefit for workers from accession countries.
"We have some people who claimed benefits for their children and were successful in their claims. We couldn't get the official information from Polish or Irish governments at the time, but maybe we didn't try hard enough," she said.
Ms Kierdelewicz said news of the entitlement was likely to spread quickly as a result of it being covered in the Irish media and the four Polish-language newspapers circulated around the country.
"For people who have children in Poland, it's very good because they have had to leave their children to go abroad to find work. They want to support them as much as possible. I don't see anything wrong with it," Ms Kierdelewicz said.
At the offices of the Polska Gazeta, the main newspaper read by Poles in Ireland, staff were yesterday putting the finishing touches to an edition which includes coverage of the child benefit issue.
Despite the extent of the coverage of the issue in the Irish media, the Polish embassy had yesterday received just "one or two" queries relating to child benefit entitlements.
Ambassador Witold Sobkow said Polish people who were coming to Ireland were here to work rather than claim social welfare benefits.
"Their aim is to come here genuinely to work, to save money and go back home. At the moment I would exclude any kind of welfare tourism. There is nothing like this happening at the moment," he said.
In response to whether he felt there would be an increase in the number of child-benefit applicants, he said: "If it is a legitimate benefit for workers, I would not exclude this. But before we never had any interest in people claiming benefit.
"This law regards the whole EU, not just Poland. It affects France, Britain, Belgium, all the countries of EU."
He said he hoped controversy over childcare payments would not lead to hostility among Irish people towards workers from accession countries.
