Ireland 'stealing business' from other countries says expert

once again you americans come out top of the league for complete ignorance towards the rest of the world! IRELAND has made AMERICA billions of dollars over the past decade, nearly all your companies european headquarters are based in dublin, the top 10 AMERICAN companies on the stock exchange have all there offices in IRELAND, MICROSOFT, DELL, INTEL, HP, XEROX, BOSTON SCIENTIFIC AND ON AND ON.... WHY? because AMERICA needed IRELAND to crack europe, IRELAND is the central hub for europe. were was vista designed? IRELAND, were are the processors for the computers you are blogging from? IRELAND were is your mc cafee virus scan designed? IRELAND. the irish people who run your european operations and some of the most highly skilled, gifted young people you could have. yes we have took a BAILOUT on a few occassions from germany, but we will pay it back, the irish economy has grown enormously over the past 20 years, in the 1980's there were 1.5million working, now there are 3million. we are only 70 years as an independent nation, after men, woman and children were suppressed and beaten and tortured to death for 600 years by the british. we deserved the cash we got over the last 70 years as compensation. and germany owed the world a digout after they murdered millions of jews and tried to bomb half of europe! NEXT TIME YOU INGNORANT AMERICANS GO SHOOTING YOUR STUPID MOUTHS OF, GO READ A HISTORY BOOK!

Wow, I know the country is in bad shape but its rising fast with the hard decisions Brian Lenihan took in the last budget and our exports have risen 15% over the last 12 months add in the dollar and sterling strengthing against the euro has shown recently that we are heading in the right direction faster than all of our EU colleagues. Maybe I'm a bit biased but there seems to be a lot of putting Ireland down recently in the New York Times some deserved but more just kicking when we are down.

Geoghegan is no idiot! He is a highly educated, 61 year old labour attorney and author. He appears, as we say at home, to have "lost the run of himself". Perhaps the reality that the labour movement in the US has declined all through his working life, has motivated him to branch out into other areas. Like many of the "intelligentsia", he believes that he is and expert in all fields! It would suit him better to devote his efforts toward fixing the problem in his own country. The Germans are very capable of speaking for themselves and looking after their own interests. It is very apparent to me that Geoghegan despite his name, has very little knowledge of modern Irish history and the challenges it faced following independence. If he is really concerned with countries "stealing business" he should direct his attentions toward China, rather than a tiny country like Ireland. His article had a demeaning and condescending tone that makes me wonder what his real agenda is.

All very dramatic but has little to do with reality. Ireland is a member of the EU and is part of the Eurozone. Those memberships come with rights and responsibilities, which Ireland will fulfill as any other member does. It's got nothing to do with an entire nation going 'cap in hand' to anyone.

Successive governments in the Republic of Ireland have always looked towards Europe & USA with cap in hand, and what have they ever gave in return for this generosity?

When you join an economic community you can and should be able to depend on them during bad times. IF it was illegal to have lower taxes as most likely it may be now with the passing of the Maastricht and Lisbon treaty then Ireland would have been taken to task by the EU prior to this person who obviously does NOT understand that Europe (members of the EU who have signed up to those treaties AND participate in the euro) is similiar to the US now, and does function as a UNIT as opposed to singular countries. Lets face it the US companies took FULL advantage of the tax free years in Ireland then TOOK OFF without paying a penny taxes there, so Geoghan does not know what he is talking about and his opinion is just that AN OPINION and and ILL informed one at that...

I don't know who this fellow is, but he's an idiot. Ireland has not run up an external deficit. Ireland's exports are booming--he's ignorant of a basic fact. The problem is the huge welfare burden of supporting the dependents of the throngs of foreign migrant workers and non-workers.