{"id":537504,"date":"2026-07-12T08:58:33","date_gmt":"2026-07-12T08:58:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/537504\/"},"modified":"2026-07-12T08:58:33","modified_gmt":"2026-07-12T08:58:33","slug":"ireland-a-journey-to-europes-wildest-economy-economy-and-business","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/537504\/","title":{"rendered":"Ireland: A journey to Europe\u2019s wildest economy | Economy and Business"},"content":{"rendered":"

If a journalist came to Dublin to write an article about the recession, they\u2019d have bad luck to run into Agust\u00edn L\u00f3pez. The sommelier from Mendoza, Argentina moved to the city four months ago and found work precisely three days after arriving, without speaking English or any prior experience, in one of the most vaunted establishments in Temple Bar, the legendary pub district in the Irish capital. The 25-year-old L\u00f3pez was trained in the world of wine<\/a> and worked in wineries in his native land, but wanted to learn about whiskey, so he packed his bags. Now, he studies industry magazines during slow times, which are few and far between because in his workplace, full of nooks and crannies and literary references, the drinking is non-stop<\/a>, from morning to night, by locals and foreigners alike. He has no complaints \u2014 the math is working out great for him: \u201cThe salary is $2,500, but tips can be over $115 on any given day, up to $230 on a good day,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s Monday, but it\u2019s not raining and things are looking reasonably good for L\u00f3pez. Tourists and Dubliners fill downtown, its stores, buses and restaurants. On the following day, the crowds grow. June 16 is known locally as Bloomsday, because it is the date on which the plot of Ulysses takes place. Dubliners celebrate the novel and its author James Joyce with tours of the city that recreate the story, and people dress up in period garb or in outfits that wink at the author\u2019s personage, with round glasses and Latin quarter hats. On that day, even more people flood the stores, buses and restaurants.<\/p>\n

The country\u2019s positive domestic spending figures are in line with its overall picture, as well as its labor market. Ireland is currently enjoying full employment, with a rate of joblessness below 5%. In such a context, its macroeconomic statistic par excellence, gross domestic product, may come as a surprise. That metric shows that the Irish economy suffered a 12% drop in the year\u2019s first quarter, the most drastic fall since such numbers have been recorded, according to the Bank of Ireland.<\/p>\n

So severe has been the tumble of this country with just over five million inhabitants \u2014 a population only just bigger than that of Alabama \u2014 that it has weighed down the entire euro zone. The bloc experienced anemic growth at 0.1% during the same period, but when Irish officials released their downward figure, the collective balance entered into the negative<\/a>, with an overall contraction of 0.2%.<\/p>\n

In reality, what happened in Ireland can be attributed to a handful of multinational pharmaceutical corporations, whose sales have plummeted and sunk the country\u2019s industrial sector by 27%, and with it, the GDP. That\u2019s because these very countries increased their exports in 2025 to anticipate Donald Trump\u2019s wave of tariffs,<\/a> and as a result, the difference between this and the last fiscal year has turned national numbers upside-down.<\/p>\n

It is often said that GDP does not tell the whole truth of what we call the real, flesh and blood economy, in any of the world\u2019s countries. But Ireland is the epitome of the gulf between macroeconomic figures and reality, thanks to the enormous weight of its large multinationals. These total more than a thousand, the majority of which are from the United States and have relocated to the island nation thanks to its labor force and more amenable fiscal treatment, among other factors. In 2016, winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics Paul Krugman<\/a> coined the charming term \u201cleprechaun economics\u201d to refer to this singular economy when it registered a growth of 25% over the previous year. Brexit, a pandemic, a tariff war and an energy crisis later, the leprechauns are back to doing their thing.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a small but very globalized economy in that foreign multinationals represent 50% of the GDP, and the majority of their earnings leave the country, so GDP is not a good representation of the Irish economy,\u201d explains Kieran Culhane, head of the integration division of the Central Statistics Office Ireland. \u201cAll countries have to deal with this impact, but when they are larger, it is not as noticeable,\u201d adds the official, who also recognizes the difficulty of making predictions. The activity of a chemical plant located in Ireland has a real impact on these numbers, but the transfer of a technology\u2019s intellectual property will move the needle dramatically. Irish authorities are so conscious of this distortion that they have developed their own macroeconomic indicator, the gross national income, which excludes this effect, but the figure is not comparable with other countries, and is only updated once a year, explains Culhane.<\/p>\n

\"\"A bar in Dublin on October 31, 2025.Matt Cardy\/Getty Images (Getty Images)<\/p>\n

\u201cGDP means next to nothing here,\u201d says Dan O\u2019Brien, chief economist at the Institute of International and European Affairs, a renowned Dublin think tank. \u201cThe domestic economy is in good shape,\u201d he says, \u201cits problems are largely related to its success, a very tight labor market that makes it difficult for companies to find and retain employees.\u201d<\/p>\n

His words are reflected by the speed with which Agust\u00edn L\u00f3pez found work upon arriving in Ireland, as well as Dublin\u2019s general hustle and bustle. Around 11% of Irish workers are in the pharmaceutical<\/a> and technology industries, both of which offer good salaries. But there are challenges, significantly including cost of living. Eurostat compares the price levels of products and services paid by households in each country in relation to purchasing power, and Ireland comes in second on that list, with prices 36% higher than average, bested only by Denmark (40%). In the eurozone, it\u2019s one of the highest by a landslide.<\/p>\n

Foreign investment<\/p>\n

Ireland, which was once one of the least dynamic countries in Europe, has become part of the globalization wave, taking advantage of U.S. interest in the unique European market and undergoing a rebirth in the 1990s, an era dubbed the Celtic Tiger. With the attraction of foreign investment as a key part of its agenda, it is now the European headquarters of several subsidiaries of emblematic groups like Meta, Apple, Microsoft<\/a>, Pfizer and Illy, flagships of U.S. corporate power. Many of the offices of these tech companies and the startups born in the wake of the big players are located in Silicon Docks, as the Grand Canal Docks area alongside the Liffey River is now known.<\/p>\n

A city of drinkers, literature and the faithful, Dublin lives up to many of its stereotypes. Also, that of being a magnet for large companies. The country\u2019s 12.5% corporate tax rate is the best-known reason behind the love affair between Ireland and multinational corporations, but the reality is somewhat more complex. For years, international companies benefited from a tax maneuver with a suggestive name, that of the \u201cDouble Irish\u201d, which very roughly speaking, worked like this: multinationals located their intellectual property in Irish subsidiaries controlled from tax havens like Bermuda, and Ireland considered them tax residents of those places. At the same time, the U.S. considered such firms tax residents of Ireland.<\/p>\n

That loophole has been closed, but the attraction remains, and U.S. companies have continued to opt for Ireland due to other reasons, as Dan O\u2019Brien reminds. \u201cDon\u2019t forget that they share a language here, it\u2019s an established community and it is located further to the west, an hour less of travel by plane, and there are around 40 million U.S. residents who have Irish heritage and are very proud of that fact. Obviously, the fiscal system helps, but it doesn\u2019t tell the whole story,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

St. Stephen\u2019s Green Shopping Centre, one of Dublin\u2019s most popular, is hosting an exhibition about the Great Irish Famine of the 18th century, which forced nearly two million people to emigrate, and ended the lives of around half that number. In the 1840s, adult men ate nearly 14 pounds of potatoes a day as their only sustenance, one of the show\u2019s plaques reminds. Another recalls the massive arrival of migrants to the United States mentioned by O\u2019Brien.<\/p>\n

Today, we\u2019re living in a vastly different century \u2014 on another planet, one might say. On the streets of Dublin, posters speak more of the housing crisis<\/a> faced by those looking for a place to live. Half of Ireland\u2019s population lives in the capital, and the vertiginous rise of the housing market, particularly its luxury units, is a frequent subject of headlines. Last week The Irish Times published an article saying Roy Keane, the former soccer coach and now sports commentator, earned more than $570,000 in profit through the sale of an apartment he\u2019d bought just three years ago in Lansdowne Place, a coveted area. Economic activity, the rise of tourism and population growth \u2014 31% between 2002 and 2022 \u2014 has accelerated the housing market in a way that seems familiar in many other metropolitan areas.<\/p>\n

\"\"An image of Dublin on October 31, 2025.Matt Cardy\/Getty Images (Getty Images)<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the worst city to rent. Lines form around the entire block just to see an apartment, young people are always leaving,\u201d complains Kevin, one of the members of the Revolutionary Housing League, who asked to be identified by his first name because he had a court hearing the next day. His group occupied the former pub Ardee House, an enormous space with several floors on a street corner that had been abandoned since 2010, when it closed amid the euro crisis. Activists have turned it into a meeting space where they serve coffee and tea for donations, which pay for the site\u2019s expenses. On Tuesday morning, a mother and daughter were seated at one of its tables and an elderly man was just leaving. A venture fund wants to build housing there, and the League is calling for more community spaces. \u201cPeople are getting angrier, they spend all their money on making sure buildings stay empty,\u201d Kevin says, his voice dripping in irony.<\/p>\n

Aidan Regan, a professor of political economy at University College Dublin, warns of another new problem, \u201cthe rise of household energy prices due to data center expansion<\/a>,\u201d but he also emphasizes the real and positive impact of big companies, in terms of employment and also revenue for public coffers. That total reached nearly $38 billion last year and Ireland closed 2025 with a public surplus of 3.7%, $14.8 billion in cold, hard cash. \u201cAnd they\u2019re not shell companies, they have a real presence,\u201d he says, though he does warn of the risks of excessive \u201cconcentration\u201d. \u201cI am one of those who for years has been arguing the need to diversify the model towards the growth of national companies,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Especially when your current business partner is named Donald Trump. Last March, when Irish Prime Minister Miche\u00e1l Martin visited the White House to celebrate St. Patrick\u2019s Day, the U.S. leader snapped, \u201cWe do have a massive deficit with Ireland. I have great respect for Ireland, for what they did and they should have done just what they did. But the United States shouldn\u2019t have let that happen. We had stupid leaders, we had leaders who didn\u2019t have a clue.\u201d <\/p>\n

Sign up for our weekly newsletter<\/a> to get more English-language news coverage from EL PA\u00cdS USA Edition<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If a journalist came to Dublin to write an article about the recession, they\u2019d have bad luck to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":537505,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[114,22420,184,85,46,178886,99255],"class_list":["post-537504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-dublin","tag-economy","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-james-joyce","tag-paul-krugman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=537504"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537504\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/537505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=537504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=537504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=537504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}