The gloomy economic news from Ireland has been relentless.

The only jobs expanding, it seems, are those helping people with unemployment benefits. The government just announced that it is hiring an extra 114 workers to deal with the crush.

The Economic and Social Research Institute has also estimated that around 35,000 foreign workers have left Ireland in the past year. But according to Minister for Integration Conor Lenihan, "commercial research made available to me on a confidential basis suggests that this figure could be as high as 100,000."

On the streets of Dublin last week, however, interviews with over a dozen non-national shoppers, store owners and store employees gave a more mixed impression.

Daniel Rohoc, 26 and originally from Slovakia, said that he knew of around 20 people, mainly from Eastern Europe, who had left Ireland recently because of the downturn.

Rohoc, who works as a clerk in an Internet cafZ, explained that some of these people are going to Germany to work in construction. Other friends, he added, who work in factories or in the catering industry have had their hours reduced and are now working part time.

Gyula Zsizsik, a bus driver originally from Hungary, said that he had noticed hearing a lot less Polish on his bus route these days.

It would perhaps be difficult to find a clearer example of evidence of how much Ireland has changed in recent years than a brief scan of the range of stores in Dublin's Capel Street. There are Polish supermarkets, hair salons and restaurants, Hungarian news agents and Afro-Caribbean wholesalers, to name but a few.

The manager of one of these stores, Erika Saltenyte, said that while she had heard of some people who had returned home, business in her Polish supermarket was booming.

"We are actually short of staff right now," she said, adding that if she were to lose her job in Ireland she would try to find another one here rather than return home.

Workers in the construction industry - the collapse of which has been one of the main factors in the Irish economic downturn - are especially at risk.

But Olga Sysak, a Polish fashion designer who has been living in Ireland with her husband, an analyst for Microsoft, for two years, said that none of her Polish friends, who were mainly well-educated professionals, were leaving.

Emilia Marchelewska, a Polish freelance journalist, echoes this point. "Among my friends and acquaintances, I haven't seen the exodus," she says, adding that she lost her job as an editor on a website in February.

Dr. Jean-Pierre Eyanga Ekumeoko, the international liaison and research co-coordinator with Integrating Ireland, an independent network of community and voluntary groups working with migrants in Ireland, says that many migrants who have been laid off would nevertheless prefer to stay in Ireland than return home.

"They will stay here and hope for a recovery," he says. "Because the economic crisis is not just affecting Ireland - it affects their home countries too."

But migrants who remain in Ireland face challenges because of the downturn.

Chinedu Onyejelem, the editor of Metro Eireann, a weekly multicultural newspaper in Ireland, said that generally speaking, the preference for migrant workers who lose their jobs is to remain in Ireland in search of another job.

He added that there was "some resentment" directed from Irish workers to non-national workers, but that this "wasn't very high." However, he said that if the recession continues into the second half of the next year it was very likely that this resentment would increase.

A spokesman for the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, Macdara Doyle, said that the exploitation of migrant workers was undoubtedly a greater problem during an economic downturn.

"It's as inevitable as night following day that some employers will go after the most vulnerable during these times. It's like the bully in the school yard," he said.