I have a question about Ireland. The question probably does not belong to this MB, but I have to know first, are there anyone from Ireland to ask?
Peace
ruadh and yojimbo come to mind but seeing as how it’s currently 5:45 a.m. there, you might have to wait a bit.
I’m from Portlaoise, what’s your question?
ah wait, I’m going to bed now, I’ll check back later…
::yawn::
So, no one here lives in Ireland (Irish or not). Or are you buzy?
Go on then.
Waiting for the question.
There are about 7/8 of us who post to the board. I’m in Dublin. If I can help you I most certainly will. 
Tx. I live in the United States. Here it comes in bits and pieces. It appears that today’s Ireland is very different from what it was even a several years ago. It’s not of Europe’s poorest countries anymore. There is no “brain drain”. Instead of immigration Ireland sees its sons and daughters come back. Etc., etc., etc. What gives? They say that Ireland’s taxes are the lowest in Europe. This alone would explain the boom. But was the tax code drastically changed, so it became attractive to do business there? Or is it just an overflow of the U.S. economic boom? The unemployment here reached ~4%, could not go lower and the businesses expanded to Ireland (where it is now at 4%, and does not go lower), because of number of factors, which make it better than, say, Thailand?
Can you explain it to me please.
I understand that it will probably be moved.
Hey, you saw that 60 Minutes II piece as well!
I believe the tax rate was deliberately restructured to appeal to foreign hitech firms, along with other construction/relocation incentives.
I know at least a dozen people who have returned in the last couple years including the young owner of a very sucessful bar here in Chicago. It is more than money and opportunity that is pulling them back- I’d love for my children to get an Irish education but alas, I have been here way too long and have to many roots here to move.
Ireland at the moment has a very “hot” economy. It is the fastest growing one in Europe if not the world. It’s been called “The Celtic Tiger”.
Things that have helped.
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A very young infrastructure which means it very modern. Good communication networks etc.
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Very aggressive tax breaks to companies who set up in Ireland.
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A young population that has a high level of education.
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A government that is very flexible to companies. Basically if they need it the government tries to accommodate.
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Lots of European money for new roads, public projects etc.
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And a fair bit of luck.
We don’t have a low tax burden at all. I’ve missed the details of the last budget but we pay ~46% tax if you earn ~20k a year. Fuel tax is very high. We do have very low unemployment (basically full employment i.e. if you need a job that pays average to ok money you can.) My company IBM can’t get the staff and nearly all the major multinationals are the same.
It’s good at the moment. The country is on a high but it could very easily go very wrong. Inflation could kill us. House prices are a absolute nightmare (the house I’m rent was worth 90k 3 years ago and is now worth ~200k.
That’s about all I can think of at the moment. I’m very hungover from a x-mas party last night. I’m sure other more knowledgeable Irish posters will pop in and give you more details. You may want to bump this thread on Mon. as a few of them post almost exclusively from work.
Hope this helped to some degree.
If you’ve got more specific questions please go ahead and ask.
MMmmmm.
Ireland is currently undergoing an economic boom the likes of which have been unparralled in our modern history. You are correct , even a few years ago Ireland was not a very viable place to be.
There are a number of factors which have led to the current situation.
A young well educated populace is certainly one.
Often underrrated as one of the main sources for our current status.
The fact that some years ago over 50% of the population of Dublin was under the age of 25 and educated led directly to the establishment of many foreign companies here.
The government saw fit to allow VERY generous tax concessions to foreign companies willing to locate here.
An example of which is the IBM call centre in Blanchardstown. There are the equivalent of 18 T1 lines feeding in there. There are over 1500 people employed as call takers. IBM did not have to pay a single penny for the building or the network infrastructure required to provide the connectivity to the building. IBM also recieves £10000 fo every person they employ for over six months.
There are many examples of this type of situation. We have a central site known as the IFSC where foreign companies pay a rate of coorporation tax so low that the european courts have determined it illegal.
This precarious positions could easily have backfired , but something interesting happened. The bribes worked. More and more companies began to see Ireland as the “Gateway to Europe” and located here.
Easy staffing , low taxation , prime location , and many other factors began to make Ireland a very attractive place.
That foreign investment in turn fuelled a new phenomenon. Ireland no longer saw itself as the poor relation. We were becoming a force to be reckoned with and the concept of succesful irish business was no longer akin to a joke. With the developing infrastructure along with newfound wealth among the populace a new breed of young Irish people decided to grab the bull by the horns (or the tiger by the tail) and take advantage of the situation.
Ireland is now in the unique (for us) position of being concerned at the amount of money we must pay into various European social funds. Up until recently it was how much we could take out that concerned us.
Im not an economist and I may be calling some aspects wrong. But I can tell you this , Ireland is a very very different place from the pit I first left 7 years ago.
Yoj …remember smog?
Guess I at least aggree with you on some points Yojimbo.
I find the taxation here to be surprising low here however.
In Finland they pull 63% off the top.
A google search on the Celtic tiger.
Sometimes it was so bad it was like the image of Whitechapel around the time of Jack the Ripper.
Black snot clogged up your nose if you walked in it. This was in the mid 1980’s not the 1880’s :eek:
BTW the IBM technology campus has 2/3 thousand out there. Intel is bigger and Hewlet Packard is about the same. The there’s Microsoft, Xerox, Symantec, Tricom etc. etc. etc.
And Damhna you are correct about the change in attitude of the Irish. This country is a different beast than my parents knew as young people and would be unrecognisable to my grandparents.
::sings:: I remember Dublin City in the rare auld times. (well I’ve been told about it anyway 
)
Oh just in case people get confused the IBM tech. campus is a down the road from the facility that Damhna described. It tests chips in the microelectronic division. Makes servers in the server division and makes harddrives in SSD.
Thank you, guys.
Yes, Mike, I saw 60 Minutes, but it was only the last drop, STS, I heard of “Caeltic Tiger” before. The whole phenomenon is very intersting, though. It looks like all small things came together in one place, at the same time… It’s also intersting that this came at the time when Ireland has had plenty of competition, STS, from many Eastern European countries-ex Soviet satellites. It looks like 40 years of socialism do more harm than 140 years of stagnating capitalism: nobody wants these semi-destructed half-colonies.
Peace
Another factor yoji & Damhna forgot to mention is that Irish workers are among the lowest paid in Western Europe. Between that and the unbelievably low corporation tax it’s fairly obvious why multinational companies would want to set up here.
I hate to sound like a spoilsport particularly as I’m benefitting as much as anyone by the current state of the economy (I wouldn’t be here if things were still the way they used to be) but it must be pointed out that the Celtic Tiger is not without its downside. Ireland now has the second greatest rich-poor disparity in the developed world (no prizes for guessing who’s #1), as well as serious problems with homelessness, drugs and street violence. The new budget is very much a blatant attempt at vote-grabbing, reducing income taxes across the board while doing very little to alleviate these social problems. And sadly while the Irish have for centuries relied upon the good will of people in other nations to take in immigrants from this country, a shocking number of people here are unwilling to extend the same to refugees from other countries arriving here, and racist incidents are becoming more and more common.
Yojimbo is correct about the housing prices and there is almost no protection for renters.
The other problem is that the Celtic Tiger economy is based upon only a small handful of industries and thus it will live and die on the global success of those industries (mainly computing, financial services and pharmaceuticals).
Denis O’Hearn’s Inside the Celtic Tiger is a good but rather pessimistic overview of the situation.
Very true and very embarrasing.
Dell’s European factory is also in Ireland, so it shapes up to be quite the technological country :). Cecil also wrote a column about similar tax relief for artists (http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_388.html). Along with some of the most favorable privacy and encryption regulations in Europe, Ireland is setting itself up to be a business paradise! With the nectar of the Gods (Guinness) along with excellent rugby (love to see the provincial teams smack the English clubs around ), certainly seems quite an excellent opportunity to me! I suppose the weather may be hell (http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_170b.html) but hey, you can’t have everything!
How are things going inflation-wise? I’ve read of all sorts of tactics being used by the government to try to control inflation, like asking banks to extend less credit, asking (forcing? am I remembering this correctly?) for a freeze on drinks prices (:D) etc (in the absence of the ability to change interest rates). Is it working?
I’ve always had some reservations about the single interest rate for such a wide variety of countries who did not demonstrate, in my mind, any convergence at all before the start of the currency.
Inflation expected to moderate following peak from todays Irish Times.
That sounds encouraging! I’m beginning to wonder if some of the doom and gloom predictions in the media this side of the Irish sea weren’t just eurosceptic inspired scare stories. Not that I could ever be described as a europhile of course, but that’s another story;).