It was just after midday on Thursday and the 200 workers, who up until the previous Friday were employed on the refit of the ESB's Moneypoint power station, were waiting to receive emergency hardship payments from the government after approaches from their union, the TEEU.

They are all owed eight weeks' pay and their employment at Moneypoint abruptly ended after their employer, Polish firm ZRE Katowice, had its contract terminated for breaking Irish employment law.

As the crowd queued for their cheques, over 150 miles away in Dublin, the TEEU was locked in difficult talks with the ESB, ZRE and the refit's main contractor, Lentjes, over their arrears.

Among those marshalling the queue is one of the worker's union representatives, Przemek Sawicki, a former snowboarding instructor who was employed as a painting supervisor at Moneypoint.

According to Sawicki, the individual financial situations of the workers queuing varied considerably, depending on their family commitments in Poland.

In some cases, he said, workers sent most of their money to Poland and had few savings while others, mainly single men, had kept their money in Ireland and had savings to help them through their situation.

Despite playing a role in some of the talks between the TEEU, the ESB and ZRE, Sawicki seemed surprisingly ambivalent about the prospect of returning to work in Moneypoint. He said, however, that he would prefer to stay in Ireland, if only for the sake of his painters.

"I care about my painter workers, " he said. "I want to organise the same work for my workers somewhere else in Ireland. But the main problem for the guys is that few speak English so it will be hard to find a job. It's a problem now because if they want something in a bank or post office, they have to get someone to translate. That's why I'm representing them for the union."

When asked why the workers would want to stay in Ireland after their recent experience with ZRE, he said the reason was simply money.

"All of us came to Ireland for money.

A welder at Moneypoint can earn nearly 5,000 per month. In Poland, he could only earn 1,500 per month."

Among those in the crowd most anxious for the dispute to be resolved was Arthur Gawel, a fitter in his mid-20s and an expectant father. He explained that his girlfriend had been due to give birth to their first child the previous week and he was hoping to be called away from the queue to go to the hospital at any moment.

His father was also employed at Moneypoint and his entire family have moved to Ireland as a result. He said this relieved some of the financial pressure on him because all his savings were in Ireland, where he had access to them.

"I've got some money for now but I'm owed 6,000 or 7,000 so I'm using my savings, " he said. "I'm still OK but there are a lot of people here without savings. Some send all their money back home and leave only 500 here to live for one month."

He said that while it was likely he and his family would stay in Ireland for the short term, many of the non-English speakers would leave once the situation was over.

"They don't care about staying later.

They have a family in Poland and they can get other jobs there. But they need this money for their families. If they got the money, they would buy a ticket and go home."

Among the workers with family obligations in Poland is another fitter, Matthew Matysiak, who is using his pay to help support his mother, father and two brothers back in Kluczbork, a large town in south-west Poland. He is also using the money to pay back a loan he took out while there. As a result, he and his girlfriend have just 700 in savings here.

"I don't know how long I can continue to live here. Maybe a week or two, " said Matysiak.

He said he was particularly worried about his accommodation. When he worked at Moneypoint, ZRE automatically deducted his rent from his salary and sent it to his landlord. Under this system, everyone's rent is paid until next week. After that, however, Matysiak and others like him will probably be unable to make their next payment.

He also that it would be difficult for him to find work elsewhere in Ireland until he is paid the money he is owed.

"I'm looking at working in Limerick or Dublin but I can't afford to move."

Many of the locals in Kilrush, however, don't want to see the Poles go anywhere and are hoping they will be reinstated at Moneypoint, according to Tom Prendeville, a local teacher and county councillor.

Prendeville works as a community liaison officer for St Senan's national school in Kilrush and has extensive dealings with the town's Polish community, which he believes now stands at around 500 people, or a fifth of the town's population.

As well as the ZRE contractors at Moneypoint and their families, other Polish workers were employed in a variety of other jobs in the town, ranging from cleaners at St Senan's to till operators at the local Supervalu.

Prendeville said many had been attracted by positive comments about the town from the Moneypoint workers.

He said their arrival had had an amazingly positive effect on Kilrush's economy and its community.

"At a time when we found it difficult to get people to stay in west Clare, they came willingly. They shopped locally and brought the town to life. They brought children's laughter to old houses which had lain vacant and they have integrated so successfully that the local soccer team regularly fields five or six Polish players."

Prendeville said the arrival of the Polish workers had come at a particularly fortunate time for the town as it had a glut of vacant apartments and houses due to a series of urban renewal tax breaks awarded to property developers who invested in the town.

"You had a lot of prime apartments ready for occupation and this dovetailed nicely with the Poles, " he said.

The president of Kilrush chamber of commerce, Karen Whelan, also believes the Polish workers have had an beneficial effect on the local economy.

She said, however, that she had noticed that there were two distinct communities of Polish workers developing in the town: the ZRE workers, most of whom planned to return to Poland once their work was done, and other Poles, who seemed to want to settle in the area.

"The effect of the Polish workers is obvious though. They have boosted the town's economy, as would obviously happen if you had several hundred extra people, and the vacant houses now have people in them.

"The Celtic Tiger had a delayed arrival in Kilrush and this has really helped the town move up and now we have large companies like Tesco [currently building a supermarket in the town] which are interested in coming here."

When asked whether the town could sustain its recent economic success if the ZRE contractors and other Polish workers left, Whelan said she was confident it could.

"We were never under any illusions about whether the ZRE people would stay because they are here on a contract basis and obviously the chamber is looking at attracting new industries and further decentralisation."

SECOND CRISIS FOR MONEYPOINT WORKERS

THE latest revelations about the non-payment of Polish workers at Moneypoint is the second time in less than 18 months that working conditions for employees of ZRE Katowice there have achieved public prominence.

Last March, the TEEU claimed the company was paying its workers there 5.20 an hour, less than a third of the legally binding minimum for workers in construction. The company disputed this but admitted that an audit had found "limited" underpayments and its workers were paid back any money owed.

However, the situation escalated dramatically the following month when ZRE sacked a shop steward who had helped to expose the underpayments, along with two colleagues, and then tried to fly them back to Poland.

Other TEEU workers at Moneypoint, as they have done in recent weeks, then threatened to down tools in support of their Polish colleagues as ZRE insisted the contracts of the three had simply ended. In the end, the main contractor at the works, Lentjes, defused the situation by giving jobs to the three workers, having ordered ZRE not to send them back to Poland.

ZRE continued, however, to be a subcontractor at Moneypoint until 20 October, when Lentjes terminated its contract citing breaches of Irish employment law.

HAPPY ENDING SEES FAREWELL TO POLES

Industrial action was averted at the last minute on Friday following an agreement at the Labour Relations Commission.

Unpaid Polish workers will be flown back home from at company expense and offered positions in the Polish parent company under the terms of the deal.

The 200 Polish workers will secure their unpaid wages and pension contributions that are owed, following intense negotiations between the ESB, contractors and subcontractors, under a proposal made by the LRC.

The TEEU filed a complaint about subcontractor ZRE Katowicz to the Garda fraud office, asking them to investigate the deduction of trade union dues from workers' wages. ZRE is to go into liquidation.

Lentjes, the main contractor at Moneypoint, will make a 600,000 goodwill payment towards the deal.

PAYMENT SCHEME AT ROOT OF DISPUTE

THE DISPUTE at Moneypoint regarding the 200 Polish contractors has its roots in the complex payment arrangements between the ESB, its main contractor Lentjes, and the workers' employer ZRE Katowice, which was hired by Lentjes to carry out part of the environmental refit project at Moneypoint.

Under these arrangements, the ESB pays the workers' salaries and other payments due to ZRE to Lentjes, which then passes them on to the Polish "rm. The Polish workers should be paid on the 15th of each month, although according to the workers, the payments were frequently two or three days late.

The first hint of payment difficulties with ZRE came in September, when the workers' payments for August did not arrive as a single sum but came in two parts spread four days apart.

As a result when their payments for September didn't arrive on 15 October, the workers were unconcerned until "ve days later when Lentjes terminated ZRE's contract due to breaches of Irish employment law.

This then resulted in tortuous negotiations between the ESB, Lentjes, ZRE and the workers' union, the TEEU, which has sought eight weeks' pay in arrears for the workers, including their outstanding pay for September and October, and two weeks' salary in lieu of notice.