55% opposed full access for workers from the two eastern European states, while 34% were in favour and 11% had no opinion.

Excluding the 'don't knows', 62%, or almost two thirds, do not want to see the labour market flooded with migrant workers with opposition most acute among the lower socio-economic groupings.

Though Ireland still has the lowest unemployment rate across the EU at 4.2% and labour shortages persist in the construction and services sectors, some scuff marks have appeared on Ireland's glossy economic outlook with most economists predicting a deceleration in growth from 2008 onwards.

The government admits it was taken on the hop in 2004 when, along with the UK and Sweden, it threw open its doors to workers from the ten accession states.

Since then well over 200,000 migrant workers mainly from Poland, Lithuania and Latvia, flooded into the country.

With high profile disputes in Gama and Irish ferries over the employment of foreign workers and with little signs of such migration easing off, the government is consulting the social partners about a re-think of its open door policy. .

Speaking last week, Siptu leader Jack O'Connor, said that Romanians and Bulgarians should not be allowed full access to employment until the employment protection and compliance measures, agreed under the new national agreement, "are fully in place and be seen to be working".

This is a matter of preventing unscrupulous employers from exploiting vulnerable migrant workers, said O'Connor. "There is no solidarity in exploitation", he said.

But the employers group, Ibec, differs from the unions. It suggests a type of halfway house arrangement in which Romanians and Bulgarians would be granted work permits on foot of a job offer but without the current labour market test.

Currently, employers wishing to employ a worker from outside the European Union must show that the job cannot be done by anybody within the EU before being granted a work permit.

In a letter to the department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment last week, Ibec director Turlough O'Sullivan said that Ibec believes that "this approach would provide the Irish government with an opportunity to monitor the situation on an ongoing basis and begin the necessary adjustments to full free movement which will occur in the medium term".

In addition to Ibec's preferred option, the government is considering offering work permits with the labour market test, which is effectively what applies at the moment, or full access.