The other was Communist East Germany, and Ireland couldn’t build a wall to keep its most talented from emigrating. So something had to change. For Whitaker, that began with the end of protectionism.
Whitaker lamented the “vicious circle . . . of increasing migration, resulting in a small domestic market depleted of initiative and skill and a reduced incentive . . . to undertake and organise the productive enterprises which alone can provide increased employment opportunities.”
Promoting exports would be a large part of this, and encouraging foreign companies to set up base even more so. He was rapidly vindicated with an unexpected growth bounce and the spell cast by Ireland’s stoic rural past was broken.
By the 1970s, Whitaker had negotiated Ireland’s entry into the European Economic Community and was quietly helping to reform banking and industry for the next phase of growth.
An early trickle of investment from technology and pharmaceutical companies became a flood. Over 700 US multinationals, including Apple, Microsoft, Google and Facebook have subsequently established regional headquarters for Europe and beyond in Ireland. But on the Continent, without the UK to kick around any more, resentment is now focusing on Dublin.
“The Frenchman in the street calls Ireland a ‘paradis fiscale’,” one business journalist tells me. “Which, if true, is also true of France and the UK. It’s just it’s done in different ways.”
It’s easier to single out the tall poppy for assault. In 2016, the European Commission imposed a €13bn (£11bn) fine – which in classic Brussels doublespeak it insists is not a fine – on the Irish tax authorities for two deals allowing Apple to minimise its payments.
Both Ireland and Apple continue to contest the decision. The tide of “inversions” – by which large multinationals formally switched their headquarters to Dublin – seems to have abated and most UK switchers have reverted back. But Ireland has reluctantly had to yield ground to the “tax justice movement”, the NGO blob making demands that elected politicians seem unable to resist.
