{"id":273336,"date":"2026-01-31T07:43:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-31T07:43:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/273336\/"},"modified":"2026-01-31T07:43:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-31T07:43:10","slug":"denis-obrien-on-irelands-need-to-stamp-out-racism-and-move-like-lightning-on-infrastructure-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/273336\/","title":{"rendered":"Denis O\u2019Brien on Ireland\u2019s need to stamp out racism and \u2018move like lightning\u2019 on infrastructure \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Now that he\u2019s no longer full time involved with the Digicel telecoms group that he created, businessman Denis O\u2019Brien<\/a> is taking the time to speak out on a number of issues relating to Irish life and the economy. <\/p>\n

A recent platform was a podcast with Ibec chief Danny McCoy<\/a> as part of a series that the employers group is running.<\/p>\n

Two key themes emerged: the need to tackle racism and xenophobia, which he believes has been creeping in here, and being ambitious in terms of tackling the infrastructure deficits that he says could hurt us in terms of lost investment and jobs. <\/p>\n

On racism, he cited the \u201cviolence towards the Indian community\u201d last year. <\/p>\n

\u201cUnless we nip this in the bud it can be a very big problem for Ireland. On a macro level, if you look at the number of Indian CEOs in the tech bro community, all of them are investors in Ireland. If there is any shift in thinking that Ireland is a racist society it could be really, really serious and it\u2019s something we need to stamp out immediately.\u201d<\/p>\n

O\u2019Brien called for a campaign of education and for the Government and An Garda Siochana to be \u201cvery decisive\u201d, while stressing that Ireland was a \u201cfundamentally tolerant society\u201d. <\/p>\n

O\u2019Brien, of course, knows a thing or two about diversity in the workplace, having won 32 phone licences across the Caribbean and the Pacific Islands with Digicel. <\/p>\n

On the issue of the Irish economy, O\u2019Brien says the Government and Civil Service should \u201cmove like lightning\u201d to implement the proposals in the recent accelerating infrastructure action plan to build out critical water, transport and grid supplies. <\/p>\n

He cited a conversation with an aircraft leasing executive who told him they were moving jobs out of Dublin to Dubai. <\/p>\n

And he added that we can\u2019t be complacent about existing Big Tech investment, while AI could take out 15-20 per cent of the workforce. <\/p>\n

Put them together and that would require a \u201chell of a belt tightening exercise [by Government] and leave less money for social programmes\u201d, he told McCoy. <\/p>\n

\u201cUnless we can get housing solved, unless we can remove the ease of judicial reviews and remove red tape, the country has a problem. Every business owner, it\u2019s on their minds.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Now that he\u2019s no longer full time involved with the Digicel telecoms group that he created, businessman Denis…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":273337,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[6572,93583,7517,78088,4105,61,60,43],"class_list":["post-273336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-cantillon","tag-danny-mccoy","tag-denis-obrien","tag-digicel","tag-ibec","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=273336"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273336\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/273337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}