One of Scotland's largest trade organisations has called on the Scottish Executive to study migration trends into Ireland in a bid to make Scotland more attractive to Eastern European workers.

According to the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB), the Scottish economy is being adversely affected by its inability to attract sufficient numbers of Eastern European workers.

In the 12-month period up to April of this year, more than 37,000 Eastern European workers moved to Ireland, compared to just 18,000 moving to Scotland during the same period. The FSB has called on the Scottish Executive to use Ireland as a model for how to recruit workers from the accession states.

Far from worrying about high numbers of Eastern European workers migrating into the west, Niall Stuart of the FSB said countries such as Ireland and Scotland should be actively seeking migrants from the new EU states. Scotland's inability to attract sufficient numbers of Eastern European workers had hampered the growth of its economy, he said.

"The Irish economy is obviously very strong at the moment, so that is very attractive to workers in Eastern states, " he told the Sunday Tribune. "However, Ireland is attracting twice as many workers into its economy than Scotland is and that is something we have to look at. The two countries are very similar in everything from the language to the awful weather, so you'd think they would be equally as attractive."

Polish people accounted for 40% . . . almost 23,000 . . . of those migrating to Ireland in 2005-06. Scotland, however, failed to attract this number of people from all 10 of the new EU states combined.

Stuart said that Scotland was particularly short on low-skilled labour and that this was causing problems for the economy. Demand for low-skilled workers far outweighed supply, he said, meaning there were plenty of job opportunities in Scotland.

The Scottish Executive established the Fresh Talent programme to attract new workers. While organisations such as the FSB have been critical of relatively low numbers of new workers moving to Scotland, Fresh Talent has defended the programme, saying it was looking for quality over quantity.

"We have been delighted with the success of the programme, " said a spokeswoman for Fresh Talent. "The programme was never about numbers, it was about getting the right people into Scotland in order to boost the economy."