{"id":564724,"date":"2026-07-23T19:21:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-23T19:21:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/564724\/"},"modified":"2026-07-23T19:21:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-23T19:21:11","slug":"rainy-day-fund-billions-should-be-spent-on-housing-says-google-ireland-chief-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/564724\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Rainy day\u2019 fund billions should be spent on housing, says Google Ireland chief \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ireland\u2019s housing crisis<\/a> must be solved or else a generation of younger people will be lost in a 1980s-style emigration crisis, the head of Google Ireland<\/a> has warned.<\/p>\n

Speaking at the Patrick MacGill Summer School<\/a> in Glenties, Co Donegal, Vanessa Hartley urged the Government to invest money currently earmarked for the State\u2019s \u201crainy day fund\u201d into housing construction instead.<\/p>\n

The State has two main funds where money is set aside for future use. These are the Future Ireland Fund and the Infrastructure, Climate and Nature Fund. At the end of last year they held nearly \u20ac17 billion between them. <\/p>\n

\u201cI have young children. Honestly, they\u2019re going to leave unless we have houses and jobs for them. It\u2019s very simple. I see this all the time,\u201d Hartley said. <\/p>\n

\u201cEvery single one of my friends are devastated to seeing their friends, their kids, leaving. We all see it. It is almost as bad as it was when my brothers all had to emigrate.\u201d <\/p>\n

Wanting billions to be spent now on housing, Hartley said the rainy day being prepared for by the Government has already arrived: \u201cIt\u2019s a rainy day when we have people leaving. We\u2019ve got to solve housing, we\u2019ve got to make sure we do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ireland is now known internationally for infrastructure blockages, she added. \u201cIreland is the only place right now where we\u2019re not developing our data centres. It\u2019s the only country in Europe. <\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s very stark. There are hundreds of billions going into data centres all over the world, and they\u2019re going to be energy efficient because they have to be for regulation and compliance, which is the right thing to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ireland must \u201cmove past the planning and into the execution\u201d, said the Google executive. \u201cIreland\u2019s always been great at execution. We\u2019ve got to stay focused on how to get things done quicker.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Aer Lingus job cuts and Ryanair\u2019s profits plunge – what is happening in the Irish aviation sector?<\/p>\n

\u201cDelivery is needed right now. Execution. Your reputation is built on execution, not on planning. We\u2019ve got to have some really clear, discernible milestones delivered very, very quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Focusing on the many positives about Ireland, she told the summer school that Google\u2019s operation in Ireland will be the fastest growing of all of the global company\u2019s 120 businesses this year outside the United States.<\/p>\n

\u201cIreland is the second-fastest growing country in the world for Google. And it is continuing to grow. It will grow the fastest in the world outside the US this year,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is because we understand how to get things done in Ireland. We vastly underestimate our business pragmatism. We vastly underestimate our productivity, and we vastly underestimate how extraordinarily agile our teams are.\u201d<\/p>\n

She praised the country\u2019s stable political and economic climate.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a stable Government. We have public-private partnership. People talk to each other. People try to get things done. Even if we can\u2019t get things done, we talk to each other in a constructive way and in a way that actually continues to work.\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0EU fines Google \u20ac890m in test of Donald Trump\u2019s threats to protect Big TechOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Google has 1,400 engineers in Ireland working on research and innovation in its centre for excellence, while its Irish operation is also a global finance and regulatory hub.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ireland\u2019s housing crisis must be solved or else a generation of younger people will be lost in a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":564725,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1711,3662,61,60,43,238545],"class_list":["post-564724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-google","tag-housing-crisis","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news","tag-vanessa-hartley"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/564724","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=564724"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/564724\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/564725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=564724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=564724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=564724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}