Anyone who doubts that the Irish economy is built on some very dodgy foundations should listen to RTEs This Week programme last Sunday.
TCD economist Antoin Murphy explains how multinational companies are using Ireland as a giant money laundering operation. Countless billions in profits, generated in other countries, are being “washed’ through our economy as if they originated here.
The Government and IDA are happy with this manipulation of profits but the US Government is not at all happy and is threatening to take action. Shane Ross writes about the situation is last Sunday’s Independent.
‘These excesses should not blind us to the dependence of the Irish economy on US multinationals. We desperately need them to stay. Such an admission is unfashionable. We like to pretend that we created our boom on our own. We didn’t.
Ask Irish politicians what caused the boom and they will nominate ‘social partnership’ as the font of our prosperity – a reason carrying an unsubtle implication that they themselves had a hand in it.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Our Celtic Tiger is multinational-conceived, created and christened. ‘
Hi,
First I’d like to say well done and thanks to you for putting up this site. It’s the most important site about Ireland on the web!
About the multinational dependency, it’s a dangerous game for the country because we become hostage to the plans of mulitnationals. They will move on to the next low-cost center when it suits them.
Sean McBride would roll in his grave at our current state of dependency. He was adamant that the country be self-sufficient. He spells out the potential for this in one of his books – apologies, but I can’t find the reference now.
Perhaps it sounds unrealistic to many today (except perhaps ex-Irish Ferries workers who make way for, basically, slave-labor).
On a more ‘moral’ note: Bertie Ahern pointed to this dependency when he justified the use of Shannon by the US war machine.
It will take a long time to change our gombeen culture, maybe, but your efforts will help. Thanks again.
He was adamant that the country be self-sufficient
We tried that in the past and it failed miserably. We live in a gobal world and we are successfull
Successful or completely dependent on external actors? Seems we have to give up a lot to get the US$. Anyway, was the self-sufficiency idea really tried?