By Oana Lungescu BBC Brussels correspondent

She said they will be treated like any other EU nationals, not need permits and have minimum wage guarantees.

Most of the existing 15 EU members fear an influx of cheap labour when 10 more countries join the union on 1 May.

Germany and Austria pushed for work bans of up to seven years on the newcomers - many others followed suit.

Mary Harney says new workers will benefit both sides

But Ireland, which currently holds the rotating presidency of the EU, will fully open its labour markets from 1 May, together with the UK, the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden.

Ms Harney said they would not put up any administrative obstacles.

"We believe that under our labour legislation, every worker should be treated equally, there should be no discrimination on the basis of ethnic origin or race or whatever and that will continue to be the case," she told the BBC.

Ms Harney, who is also Ireland's minister for employment, said the workers would all be entitled to a minimum wage of seven euros an hour at the least.

There are already some 100,000 foreigners working in Ireland, a country of only four million people.

Half of them come from the rest of the EU, but at least 20,000 come from Central Europe and the Baltic countries.

They mainly work in hotels, restaurants, the meat industry and agriculture.

IRISH PRIORITIES FOR EU Breaking constitution deadlock Boosting US ties Welcoming 10 members Boosting economy Improving cross-border police co-operation Boosting asylum and immigration co-ordination

Under a law passed last April, Ireland gives preference to nationals of the new member states - prompting discontent from non-European workers, mostly from India and the Philippines.

But, like all EU countries, Ireland also reserves the right to introduce restrictions on the free movement of workers from Central Europe if serious disturbances of its labour market occur.

But Ms Harney said they were not afraid that Ireland could be swamped after the expansion of the EU.

"It is a vote of confidence in the enlargement," she said.

"It is giving people from those countries the opportunities we had in the past as a nation of emigrants in search of work."

She said the Irish economy needed skilled labour, and the exchange would also benefit those countries' citizens.

They could gain experience and resources to take back home, like the Irish citizens once did in Germany and the UK.

In fact, Central European workers may be tempted to go back after a few years working in Ireland, simply because living there is by no means cheap.

For poorer countries with high rates of unemployment like Poland or Slovakia, Ireland could provide a model of how to make the best of EU membership

That is the downside of a booming economy which has turned Ireland into the second richest country in the EU after Luxembourg.

But for poorer countries with high rates of unemployment like Poland or Slovakia, Ireland could provide a model of how to make the best of EU membership.

"We had, for over 20 of the 30 years since we joined the EU, the highest or second highest level of unemployment in the EU," Mary Harney explained.

"It ran as high as 17% and we had mass emigration at the same time. We were virtually a basket-case."

Greek model

"The way we generated more employment was by encouraging more business expansion and more foreign direct investment to use Ireland as a gate-way into the wider European market, investing in education, controlling our public finances, being light on regulation, not putting in place inflexible approaches to labour market issues."

Unemployment now stands at under 5% and Ireland boasts one of the best trained working-forces in Europe.

The newcomers will have to decide whether to spend a sizeable amount of their EU funds on education and promoting investment, like Ireland, or to follow the Greek model and use EU money primarily to improve infrastructure and boost domestic consumption.

Most say they want to go down the Irish route - but only time will tell if they can be as successful in the EU as Ireland has been.