FT SPECIAL REPORT

Ireland and the World

www.ft.com/reports | @ftreports

Wednesday October 22 2014

Recovery
hinges on
global
connections

Inside
Young, gifted and
heading for the exit
Youth brain drain is
raising concern but
immigration continues
Page 2

Rural roots still count

in a modern economy
Other sectors get the
attention but agriculture
remains a big employer
Page 3

Tech, tax and Dublins

thriving Silicon Docks
Favourable rates are
not the only advantage
of the technology hub
Page 4

The nation will draw on worldwide goodwill as it

emerges from economic crisis. By Vincent Boland

St Patricks day 2014: landmarks in Brazil, Italy and Egypt are bathed in green light to celebrate

trange things have started to

happen around the world to
celebrate St Patricks day.
The statue of Christ the
Redeemer above the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro and the Sphinx
and pyramids of Egypt are bathed in soft
green lighting. The water in the White
House fountain is also turned green.
Even the Great Wall of China does not
escape. On March 17 this year, the fortification was lit in the Irish national colour for the first time.
This greening of the world, as Irish
tourism officials have called it, is mostly
advertising. Ireland reimburses some of
the cost of arranging all that green lighting. But it pays off. Tourism Ireland says
the effort reaps about 10m worth of

even the humble pint of Guinness first

exported in 1769 and now available in
more than 130 countries the country
wields a lot of soft power.
This idea of Ireland is particularly
strong in countries where Irish emigrants traditionally ended up the UK,
Australia, the US and Canada. Jimmy
Deenihan, Irelands minister for the
diaspora, says there is a natural connection between the diaspora and Ireland based on the pull of place.
Or, as Paul Keating, the former Australian prime minister, put it in an
address to the Dil, the Irish parliament,
21 years ago: If Ireland did not exist,
countries like Australia would have to
invent it, and perhaps we should.
Philip King, a musician and broad-

publicity for the country for an outlay of

about 60,000.
It is also something of a diplomatic
and cultural triumph. The willingness
of people who may have no connection
with Ireland to go green for a day is testament to the affection and esteem for
this small country on the edge of northwest Europe.
Given the economic crisis the Irish
have endured for the past six years,
which brought to an end a golden era of
economic expansion and increasing
wealth, they may be cynical enough to
dismiss such esteem.
But Ireland retains a hold on the
worlds imagination. Through its enormous diaspora, its literary and cultural
heritage, its anti-colonial struggle and

caster, says the thing that defines the

image of Ireland abroad is authenticity.
Its indigenous culture, vibrant and visible in sport and music, is the real thing.
The Irish, he says, possess a creativity, distinctiveness and capacity for selfexpression that create its image in the
minds of others.
As the country navigates its way back
to economic health, it must call on
those qualities.
Geographically and economically, Ireland has few natural advantages. For
much of its independent history, it has
been a paradox a relatively stable polity (at least compared with other postcolonial states) with, for a generation, a
violent ethnic and religious conflict in
the islands north, which was and still is

part of the UK. Neither the Republic nor

Northern Ireland has been particularly
well governed; the Republics economy
has tended to endure boom-and-bust
cycles, while emigration has long been
taken for granted as an Irish solution to
an Irish problem.
Irelands current difficulties are formidable, but they are not insurmountable. The country has many strengths
that allowed it to survive the upheavals
of the 20th century and to enter the 21st
on a confident footing.
Even after the financial crisis that hit
in 2008, it remains a stable society. From
being a rigid, economically conservative,
Christian Democratic country until the
1960s, the republic has in the past
continued on page 2

How an Irish passport

opens important doors
Veteran correspondent
Conor OClery on being
an Irishman abroad
Page 5

On FT.com
How the heavyweights
took off overseas
ft.com/reports

Wednesday 22 October 2014

FINANCIAL TIMES

Ireland and the World Migration

Workers from abroad

continue to arrive in
spite of tough times
Immigration

A network effect means

communities from Europe
and beyond have taken
root. By an FT reporter

On the way: Australia is among popular emigration destinations for young Irish adults Eric Luke / The Irish Times

Exodus of young talent prompts

concerns about skills shortages
Emigration Persuading highly educated workers to return home is an uphill struggle. By an FT reporter

avid Garrahy will one day

return to live in Ireland, he
says, but Im not entirely
sure when and at what stage
of my life. The 34-year old
from Doolin, County Clare, who has a
degree in law and European studies and
a Masters in international relations,
works in Brussels for the European
Youth Forum.
Mr Garrahy is part of an exodus of
young, highly educated people from Ireland. Persuading them to return is
becoming an increasingly critical political issue as the nation contemplates the
economic and social cost of the loss of its
future workforce.
We are going to see serious skills
shortages, says Marie-Claire McAleer,
senior research and policy officer at the
National Youth Council of Ireland,
which recently sponsored a conference
to look at how to encourage young people back.
Were losing our revenue base, and
this is coupled with an ageing population, Ms McAleer says, describing the
outflow as potentially catastrophic.
Indeed, the issue is so close to the top
of the political agenda that Ireland
recently named its first minister of state
for the diaspora, Jimmy Deenihan.
A look at the official numbers shows
why this is such a pressing matter.
Although net emigration has fallen to
21,400 in the year to April 2014, down
from 33,100 the year before, more than
228,000 Irish nationals left the country
between 2009 and 2013, the majority of
them young and educated. More than
132,000 of them nearly 60 per cent
had university degrees.
Ireland had invested significantly in
their education and were losing them to
other countries, says Ms McAleer.
The population aged 20-24 fell by

Irish Migration
000
Immigrants
Emigrants
Net migration

150
100
50
0
-50
-100

2004

05

06

07

08

Source: CSO

13.2 per cent between 2006 and 2011, an

outflow not seen even in the depths of
the recession of the 1970s, when Irelands overall economic base was far
smaller than it is today.
The population aged 25-29 fell by 3.2
per cent in those years. And while some
of the drop is due to recent immigrants
largely from countries that had
recently joined the EU returning
home as jobs dried up, more than half of
it was down to young Irish nationals
leaving home.
A 2013 survey by researchers at University College Cork, found that 75 per
cent of those questioned believed emigration is having a negative effect. The
study also underlined that emigration
is most likely among the well-educated.
While 47 per cent of Irish people aged
25-34 have a university qualification,
the figure for recent Irish emigrants is
62 per cent.
The exodus is generally held to be a
consequence of the financial crisis,
which led to soaring unemployment
with younger workers most affected.

09

10

11

12

13

14

Years ending April

Data from the OECD show that Irelands

total unemployment rate rose from 4.4
per cent in 2005 to 14.7 per cent in 2012,
although it had fallen to 11.1 per cent by
last month
But among those aged 15-24, the percentage in work nearly halved since
2005, going from 47.8 per cent of that
group to 27.9 per cent in 2012.
The effects of mass emigration are not
limited to the economy; social reverberations are being felt, too. The University
College Cork study found that at least
one household in four in rural areas of
Ireland has been affected by emigration
of at least one person since 2006.
Moreover, the researchers noted,
emigration is high when compared with
Irelands unemployment rate. Greece
and Spain, with higher unemployment,
have not seen departures on the scale of
Irelands.
Ms McAleer says that there is anecdotal evidence that, for example, a dearth
of young people means that sports clubs
in rural areas cannot find enough participants. Moreover, emigration often

means the dissolution of intergenerational households, with attendant grief

for parents.
Not everyone has the means to fly
over to see their children in Australia,
Ms McAleer notes.
In some professions construction,
nursing and teaching in particular
there are also concerns that highly
trained workers will find careers and
living conditions so much better abroad
that they may never return, even if the
economy picks up.
To this end, the government and
employers are beginning to make
efforts to encourage expatriates to
come home. There are moves to create
a database to keep track of emigrants
and it has been suggested that notices of
skilled job vacancies be posted to those
living abroad.
But to listen to Mr Garrahy, who works
as a policy and advocacy co-ordinator at
the European Youth Forum in Brussels,
Irelandfacesanuphillstruggle.
Though I think theres an instinctive
desire in nearly all Irish people to come
home, it would not make much sense
right now in my career path to do that
the career opportunities are just not
there, Mr Garrahy says.
While conditions in Ireland would be
better for him than when he left at the
height of the financial crisis in 2008, this
is not enough to draw him back.
This balance is still missing in the
jobs market, the housing market and
the taxation system, he says, adding
that he has little confidence that the
career path he is on in Brussels exists
back home.
Ms McAleer acknowledges how difficult it will be to bring young people
back. This time around, there really is
a sense that the young people have it
easier when they emigrate.

Irelands historic role as a large-scale net

exporter of people came to an abrupt
halt in the late 1990s, coinciding with
the boom that led to the country becoming known as the Celtic Tiger.
Data from Irelands Central Statistics
Office show net emigration every year
from 1987 to 1995, despite up to 40,000
immigrants arriving annually. But by
the middle of the decade, history
reversed and Ireland became a destination for large numbers of immigrants.
That inflow picked up sharply and
peaked at 151,100 new migrants entering Ireland in 2007 alone. The immigrants were both returning Irish natives
and foreign-born, with the majority of
the latter from countries which joined
the EU in 2004.
Even now, six years after the 2008
financial crisis drove unemployment to
more than 13 per cent, immigrants continue to arrive, albeit more slowly than
in pre-crisis days, but in far larger numbers than they did before the boom.
Even in the lowest post-crash year of
immigration, the total number was
greater than in any year before the Tiger
boom. (There was, however, net emigration of 21,400 in the year to April
2014 see story on emigration, left.)
The biggest change is that in the
early 1990s, we didnt have an immigrant community and now we do, says
Alan Barrett, an economist specialising
in migration for Irelands Economic and
Social Research Institute. Immigrant
communities, he says, have network
effects, drawing in new members, even
when economic conditions are tough.
An immigrant community has taken
root here, Mr Barrett says.
One reason for the surge may be that
in 2004 Ireland, with the UK and Sweden, was one of three European nations
immediately to accept migrants from
countries that joined the EU that year.
But non-European Economic Area
(EEA) migrants have also been arriving
in large, albeit dwindling, numbers. In
2013, non-EEA migrants with permission to remain totalled 120,000, down
from 132,000 three years earlier.
The top six registered non-EEA
nationalities, which account for more
than half the total, are India with 11 per
cent, Brazil with 10 per cent and China,
Nigeria, the US and the Philippines with
9, 8, and 6 per cent respectively.
Nearly one in six of Irelands 4.6m residents were born outside the country,
according to current estimates. Roughly
70 per cent of that influx comes from
within Europe, including the UK.
Strong growth in national output in
the years before the crash particularly
in housing and commercial property
markets fuelled demand for workers.
Official data show a heavy bias in favour
of male migrants most likely to be
employed in construction. In 2009 and
2010, for example, roughly twice as
many men as women who came from

Street scene: a Polish shop in Dublin

new EU countries decided to leave, as
jobs in construction collapsed.
The influx of migrants into a country
that historically was a net people
exporter has had social repercussions.
While surveys in the 1990s showed a
majority of those questioned believed
immigrants provided a net benefit,
views began changing, even before the
economyimplodedin2008.Astudythat
year by professors at University of Limerickfoundgrowingopposition.
Professors Christine Cross and Thomas Turner wrote: Overall, a sizeable
minority of respondents believed immigrants undermine their countrys culture, have a negative impact on wages
and the poor and a negative impact on
jobs and the economy. Given the consistent upward trend in the number of
immigrants into Ireland and the ageing
population demographic, such negative
attitudes are a major cause for concern
both for organisations and for government policy makers.
Despite growing tension, Ireland has
not developed an anti-immigrant political movement. And while there is evidence that immigrants are applying for

Irish people are

sympathetic because a
huge proportion have been
migrants themselves
jobless benefits in greater numbers than
natives (under the Habitual Residence
Condition, longer-term migrants now
qualify), the picture is complex.
For example, a 2010 study found the
number of immigrants claiming benefits rose by more than 200 per cent over
a two-year period, while the number of
Irish nationals signing on went up by
130 per cent. Many of the immigrants
may have been men employed in construction who have since left.
Among immigrants who came before
EU expansion, those employed in sectors such as information and communication or health and social work that
have a high share of skilled and highly
skilled positions have been relatively
unaffected by the crisis, according to
Irelands Central Statistics Office.
Mr Barrett notes anti-immigrant sentiment in Ireland is more muted than
elsewhere. No major political party has
an anti-immigrant platform, he says.
Irish people have been more sympathetic because a huge proportion of
them have been migrants themselves.

Recovery hinges on global connections

continued from page 1
40 years become a more social democratic society, with a liberal economy
that welcomes foreign direct investment and fosters entrepreneurship.
A main reason for this shift is membership of the EU, which Ireland joined
in 1973 with the UK and Denmark.
Accession was the key event in the
Republics history until the 2008 crisis.
Ireland has leveraged its EU membership to the hilt. This is evident in
the volume of money, received since
1973 through the common agricultural
policy and structural and cohesion
funds, spent on education and infrastructure. For example, the European
Commission says some 6bn has been
provided for education and training
since accession.
EU membership helped Ireland to
afford to develop the infrastructure
required of a modern state. But it has
also allowed the Irish to see themselves
in a wider context, beyond the colonial
and postcolonial relationship with the
UK on the one hand, and the sometimes
sentimental but also highly political
relationship with the US.
EU membership re-established historical links with Europe that many
Irish people had forgotten about.
Education played a big role. In 1960,
only 5 per cent of Irish 18-year-olds
went on to higher education. By 1980
that had swelled to 20 per cent, and the

proportion is now about 65 per cent,

according to the National Strategy for
Higher Education to 2030. That has
been a boon for the economy: universities, colleges of technology and colleges
of education churn out thousands of
well-educated people every year.
This is an important factor in the
emergence of the Celtic Tiger, the economic expansion between the early
1990s and the mid-2000s. At the same
time as the economy was roaring ahead,
the ending of the Troubles in Northern
Ireland was under way.

65%

5%

Proportion of Irish
18-year-olds
entering higher
education

Economic and
Social Research
Institutes 2014
growth forecast

Peace and economic prosperity, however, had a hidden cost. Their simultaneous arrival destabilised the old institutions that used to run the republic
clientelist and parochial politics, the
Catholic Church and the elites of the
civil service and business.
Ireland responded with a series of
austerity budgets to the end of the Celtic
Tiger phase and the cost of the failure of
its banks and property developers a
64bn hole in the national finances,
requiring an emergency call to the International Monetary Fund.

As the economy begins to grow again

the Economic and Social Research Institute projects by 5 per cent this year and
next that era may be over. But it will
take longer to rebuild failed institutions.
The crash in Ireland was heard around
the world, yet the country is still a buoyant place. For example, it still attracts
international investment. When HubSpot, a US online marketing company,
wanted to establish a European base, it
choseDublin.
We were looking for a city like Boston, a network of universities, an established tech nexus, talent, scale, says
Jeetu Mahtani, managing director of
HubSpots international business. Dublin met all those requirements. The
company arrived last year and now
employs100people.
In times of crisis, one discovers who
ones friends are. In the past few years,
Ireland has developed a new relationship with its diaspora, which has
changed from one of emigrant labourers
to one of emigrant entrepreneurs.
As Kingsley Aikins, who runs Diaspora Matters, which advises governments on diaspora issues, observes, Ireland has an empire built by the fact
that 10m people left, achieved a lot, and
are now reconnecting. They are not a
lost asset. They are a national asset.
And they are part of the reason the
world likes to go green for a day every
year.

Wednesday 22 October 2014

FINANCIAL TIMES

Ireland and the World Business

Domestic economy remains rooted in agriculture

Industry Technology
and pharmaceutical
companies are the
focus of international
attention, but farming
is at the nations heart,
writes Vincent Boland

ver three days in late September, in glorious Indian

summer weather, nearly
300,000 people turned out
for the biggest public event
in Ireland. It is not a technology fair. It is
not a football or hurling match. It is not
even St Patricks day.
It is the National Ploughing Championships, the most beloved rendezvous
in Irelands rural calendar, as Irish
President Michael D Higgins said as he
declared the event open.
Held on 800 acres of prime farming
land in County Laois, this years championships attracted the biggest crowds in
their 83-year history.
As well as ploughing (a skill at which
Irish farmers have traditionally
excelled), the event also includes vast
exhibitions of Irish food, agricultural
products, animals, machinery and
farming techniques.
The event is claimed to be the biggest
of its kind in Europe. Rural Ireland has
always turned out in force, but it also
attracts large crowds from Dublin as
well as political leaders keen to be seen.
As Mr Higgins remarked, a visit to the
championships is an encounter with
rural Ireland and the real economy in its
best sense.
Much of the international focus on
Ireland concerns its recently acquired
status as a European technology hub,
the growth of the pharmaceutical sector
over the past four decades, and the factors especially favourable tax treatment that attract the tech and pharma
industries. Yet Irelands domestic economy is rooted in agriculture.
The technology sector, the result of
Irelands long-established policy of
attracting foreign direct investment, is
vital to the Irish economy (see page 4). It
employed 160,000 people at the end of

2013, and is one reason why the country

has become an admired business location by US multinationals, despite the
trauma of its financial collapse.
Tech companies led by Google and
Microsoft accounted for six of Irelands
top 10 exporters last year, while the list
included two pharma companies,
according to the Irish Exporters Association. (Ireland runs a large trade surplus: 3.4bn at the end of June.)
But two factors affect the business
landscape. The first is that the scale of
the Irish food industry is both large and
underappreciated.
According to Bord Bia, the Irish food
board, exports of Irish food and drink
reached 10bn last year up 40 per
cent over the past four years. While the
countrys total exports are about
180bn, the sector is the largest indigenous industry in Ireland. The department of agriculture estimates that it
employs 167,000 people.

The second factor is that Ireland is not

just a location for foreign direct investment, but a source of it. Like Switzerland, Ireland is home to more multinationals than the size of its economy and
domestic market would warrant.
Many of these global companies
names such as Smurfit Kappa in packaging, CRH in building materials and DCC
in distribution began life as small local
operators. They have expanded over the
past 30 years, mainly through acquisitions. Only 1.8 per cent of Smurfit
Kappas annual revenue (8bn in 2013)
is sourced in Ireland, for example.
Ian Hyland, the founder and president of Ireland INC, a body that promotes Irish business overseas, says
Ireland-based companies employ
170,000 people in the US more than US
companies employ in Ireland.
We need to respect what Irish companies are doing right across the
world, Mr Hyland says, pointing to

Irish companies not just in the US but

also in places such as China.
The most prominent of the first generation of international business figures is
Tony OReilly, the former chairman and
chief executive of Heinz, the US food
group, and of Independent Newspapers,
Irelands biggest media company. Others
include Michael Smurfit, who made
Smurfit Kappa into a global operator
from its base in a Dublin suburb, and the
late Tony Ryan, founder of Ryanair and a
pioneerinaircraftleasing.
They have now been replaced by the
next generation, led by Michael
OLeary, who has turned Ryanair into an
international brand.
There is a limitation to being an Ireland-based indigenous multinational:
the small size of the Irish stock
exchange.
In 2011, CRH became
the first to shift its primary stock market

Competition: the National

Ploughing Championships
(above), opened by President
Michael D Higgins (below)
Alan Betson/The Irish Times

listing to London. It was followed by

Greencore (in the food industry), UDG
Healthcare, Grafton (building materials) and DCC.
Much of the trading in those stocks is
still done in Dublin, but the emigration
of such big names has been a blow to the
Dublin capital markets.
Nevertheless, business chiefs say,
Irish multinational businesses have
weathered the financial crisis and the
collapse of the economy relatively well,
given their extensive exposure to international markets.
More domestically focused companies are still recovering, as consumer
sentiment revives slowly from the
downturn and six years of austerity. But
they remain an essential part of the economic and business landscape. Its
not all about technology, says
Mr Hyland. Our indigenous companies are vitally
important for us.

Wednesday 22 October 2014

FINANCIAL TIMES

Ireland and the World Technology

Cluster effect
reinforces
success of
Dublins docks
Technology Low tax and big-name neighbours are
not the only advantages, writes Andrew Byrne

ozens of giant light-sticks

illuminate the path to Dublins Grand Canal Theatre at
night, glowing red and flashing in dazzling rhythms.
Landscape architect Martha Schwartzs
neon red carpet offers a new kind of
Irish welcome. It announces to visitors
they have arrived somewhere bold and
modern: Dublins Silicon Docks.
Many of the biggest names in global
technology now call the docks their
European home and the area is the most
visible sign of the governments red carpet strategy for high-tech investment.
The combination of low taxes, a well
educated English-speaking workforce
and a vibrant tech ecosystem has long
proven to be alluring. IDA Ireland, the
state body charged with attracting foreign investment, has been wooing foreign pharmaceutical and technology
firms since the 1950s.
We didnt develop this overnight, but
weve had huge success in recent
months and years, says Martin Shanahan, the IDAs new chief executive, who
predicts the sector will create an additional 45,000 jobs by 2018.
IBM opened an Irish operation in
1956, Pfizer arrived in 1969 and Intel in
1989. By 2007, tour guides could tell visitors that Ireland was the worlds largest
exporter of software and Viagra.
The investors of the early years have
now been joined by second-generation
web companies such as Facebook,
Google and Twitter. It is an impressive
list for a city that has established itself as

a global tech hub and is struggling to

build enough offices.
But Irelands investment model has
come under attack for allowing companies such as Google to avoid paying tax
on much of their profits. The most notorious trick is the double Irish, where
companies exploit differences in international tax codes, funnelling profits
out of Ireland and into tax havens where
they hold intellectual property. The
European Commission is also investigating Apples tax arrangements to see
whether the company received special
treatment from revenue authorities.
Michael Noonan, Irelands finance
minister, moved to phase out the double Irish in last weeks budget, but told
Irish MPs that the headline 12.5 per cent
corporate tax rate never has been and
never will be up for discussion and
would not change.
John FitzGerald, research professor at
the Economic and Social Research Institute, says the focus on tax misses many
of the reasons why companies have
based themselves in Ireland.
The situation is more competitive
now the UK corporate tax rate is now
20 per cent so the benefit is more limited, he says.
You can set yourself up in Estonia or
Slovakia and pay less corporate tax than
in Ireland, so there have to be other reasons for Irelands success, he adds. Its
a combination of skills, flexibility in the
economy and so on.
Mr Shanahan agrees. To simplify
this as just about tax is an error and

Momentum:
Dublins Silicon
Docks are home
to many of the
worlds biggest
names in global
technology
Alamy

misunderstands what Ireland is doing.

You walk around Dublin and you see a
vibrant, attractive city. The clustering
effect from companies that want to be
co-located is very important.
Near the neon red carpet, Facebooks
Europe, Middle East and Asia headquarters employs 500 people. Sonia
Flynn, head of Facebook Ireland, suggests the office could double its current
size. Dublin is our largest office outside
California. We have teams here on engineering, IT, marketing, sales and
finance, she says.
Ms Flynn, who was headhunted from
Googles European HQ across the canal,
says Dublin had already created a
vibrant tech ecosystem by the time
Facebook opened there.
When Facebook looked at Ireland as
a location, our people were struck by
the wealth of experienced leadership

and talent. The local talent really shone

through and that made it easy to set up
quickly.
For some, the presence of tech behemoths such as Facebook is a mixed
blessing. Younger start-ups can struggle
to compete for skilled labour. Earlystage start-ups rarely turn profits, so do
not benefit from the tax regime.
But William McQuillan, a partner at
Frontline Ventures, a venture capital
fund, says that Dublins tech ecosystem
is nonetheless spinning off plenty of
innovative companies.
The larger companies upskill the
local population in developing, managing and selling tech and they also bring
in international talent. People come
here, they get a girlfriend or boyfriend
and after a few years they settle down.
Many of them eventually set up their
own companies, he says.

Once you
have a base
of start-ups,
it creates a
community
and that
attracts
more people
to this work

Brett Meyers arrived from Australia

in 2000 to work in finance before founding CurrencyFair a currency exchange
website that processes 5m worth of
transactions a day. The company is on
course to grow fivefold by 2015, he says.
Mr Meyers has been impressed by how
Dublin has embraced tech innovation.
Once you have a base of start-ups and
resources, it creates a community and
that attracts more people to do this kind
of work. Dublin has got momentum now
andtheresamultipliereffect,hesays.
Over time, you get people exiting
from successful tech companies. Then,
they can go on and invest and mentor
new Irish start-ups. Im seeing it every
day and that makes me very optimistic
aboutthecitystechscene,headds.
How Irelands heavyweight international
companiesmadeitbig:www.ft.com/ireland

Digital entrepreneurs stand out

from the crowd in Silicon Valley
Start-ups

Irish energy and experience

are impressing venture
capitalists in San Francisco,
writes Hannah Kuchler
The flood of big technology companies
arriving in Ireland has encouraged some
young Irish start-ups to move in the
opposite direction in the hope of making
their fortune on the US west coast.
Google, Apple and Facebook chose
Ireland for their European headquarters, promoting careers in technology
and inspiring some tech entrepreneurs
to launch their own companies. But to
find venture capital funding, contacts
and a much larger market, many head
to the home of those larger companies:
Silicon Valley.
These expats range from Liam Casey,
who heads the large supply chain management company PCH International,
which has worked with companies
including Apple, to newcomer Stripe,
the payments company working with
Twitter and run by two Irish brothers,
John and Patrick Collison.
Eoghan McCabe, 30-year-old chief
executive of Intercom, a software company that helps businesses interact with
their customers online, made the leap in
2011 and has since raised $30m. His
journey to becoming a Silicon Valley
techie began when his parents gave
in to an AOL CD-Rom that was pushed
through their letterbox in Ireland in
1996 enticing them to get online.
Mr McCabe built his first website
when he was 12 and later spent time as
a freelancer, building crappy websites
for companies, while he studied com-

puter science at Trinity College Dublin.

Intercom maintains an office in Dublin, but Mr McCabe was attracted to San
Francisco by the concentration of people who are equally passionate about
technology.
San Francisco really is the only part
of the world with great investors, peers,
customers and talent. You cant find
that concentration anywhere else, he
says. You dont try to get to the very
top of the finance or movie industry
basing yourself in Helsinki or Timbuktu or Dublin.
However, Mr McCabes Irish connections still benefit the company, which
has invested the majority of its research
and development money in Ireland to
avoid the talent crunch in the valley.
Software engineers in the Silicon Valley can command much higher wages
and often want to work on the coolest
Good connections
Intercom founder
Eoghan McCabe
moved to California
but much of his
R&D is in Dublin

new thing. Hiring them in Ireland is

much easier.
In Ireland and within the Irish people, there is a very broad range of engineering experience and skills they are
ex-Amazon, ex-Facebook, ex-Google,
who happen not to want to leave their
home, Mr McCabe says.
Mark Moore, a recent arrival from
Ireland, agrees, and his company has
kept its main office in Dublin. He is chief
executive of OralEye, a teledentistry
company that has developed an app
enabling people to send a photo of their
teeth to their dentist. He is currently
fundraising in Silicon Valley, where the

worlds largest concentration of technology venture capitalists is on his doorstep. He says Dublin and Silicon Valley
both have advantages when it comes to
recruitment.
In Dublin, we have a stronger network, people we went to university
with, Mr Moore says. In San Francisco,
people are far more open to new prospects, the job market is more fluid; there
are more people who are independently
supported, since they left their previous
job and open to something new.
Foreigners have flocked to Silicon Valley for decades and a new wave of hopeful start-up founders from around the
world is eager to raise funds from the
venture capitalists whose offices line
Sand Hill Road.
David Smith, vice-president of international programmes at the US Market
Access Center, works with about 20 foreign government organisations trying to
help companies from their countries
make headway. Mr Smith originally
came with Enterprise Ireland, but says
even his non-Irish colleagues recognise
Irish start-ups often have an edge.
Irish companies are by and large better than [those from] most countries we
see. They are much more realistic,
much more prepared, their technology
is more substantial and their differentiator is usually much more substantial,
he says.
They can also make use of a well-connected Irish community. Mr Smith has
between 800 and 900 Irish contacts in
the valley alone.
The Irish diaspora here will go that
extra mile for you to get you connected
to the right people. [They think] things
are really bad at home, something needs
to happen and you guys create employment, so this is my bit to help the
recovery.

Contributors
Vincent Boland
Ireland correspondent

Jerry Andrews
Commissioning editor

Andew Byrne
FT reporter

Helen Barrett
Sub editor

Hannah Kuchler
San Francisco correspondent

Steven Bird
Designer

Conor OClery
Irish writer and journalist

Andy Mears
Picture editor

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Charles Blandford
+353 86 2528885 and
charles.blandford@ft.com
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Wednesday 22 October 2014

FINANCIAL TIMES

Ireland and the World International connections

We are seen as convivial it is a distinct plus

GLOBAL RELATIONS

Conor
OClery

ello, I said. My name is

Conor OClery. I am the
international business
editor of The Irish Times
of Dublin, Irelands leading newspaper,
calling from my New York office. After
a few moments the Intel executive on
the line responded. Cool!
The interview was a breeze after
that. His amused response typified a
phenomenon I frequently encountered
in a quarter of a century reporting
abroad for The Irish Times, especially
in the US. It reflected a friendly and
sometimes patronising attitude
towards Ireland, and towards me as an
Irish correspondent. Similarly when I
sought an interview in Boston with the
president of the Massachusetts senate,
he swept me on to the senate floor,
provoking a protest, Stranger in the
House! No stranger, said my escort.
Hes The Irish Times.
The aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist
attack on the World Trade Center,
which I witnessed from my office
window three blocks away, and which
killed hundreds of Irish-American
emergency workers, emphasised for
me a special relationship between
Ireland and the US. Ireland was one of
the few countries outside the US to
observe a day of mourning.
After the attack, I had to relocate to
the W Hotel uptown. A few days later
my telephone bill exceeded $5,000.
I told the manager I was using the
room as an emergency office and at
this rate it would bankrupt the
newspaper.
The Irish Times? he said. Ill not
let you leave until we agree a fair
price. He cut the final bill in half.
This benign attitude was a valuable
asset when I was White House
correspondent some years earlier. The
offices of important Irish-American
lawmakers opened their doors to me.

Family ties:
Barack and
Michelle Obama
visit Co. Offaly
(above); Conor
OClery (right)
Jewel Samad/AFP

My busiest day was March 17, when

political Ireland would descend on
Washington to celebrate St. Patricks
Day at black-tie dinners, and the
taoiseach of the day visited the Oval
Office, a fixed annual privilege granted
to no other world leader.
I found every president likes to claim
Irish ancestry, including Barack Obama,
who located a great-great-grandfather
from Co. Offaly. When President
Clinton got involved in the Irish peace
process, I had my calls returned and
landed three interviews with him,
unheard of for a European reporter.
This unique access continued even
after I became Asia correspondent and
President Clinton visited China. I was

put on a very short list for questions at

his press conference, much to the
chagrin of my colleagues from the
worlds media, because he wanted to
say something publicly about events in
Northern Ireland.
In Asia and the Middle East
especially, I found being Irish was a
distinct plus, mainly because we are
seen as convivial: Irish bars in every
city; we never colonised anybody; and
we are historically unaligned.
This neutrality had a practical
application in Beijing, when
demonstrators set upon western
journalists after the Nato bombing of
the Chinese embassy in Belgrade.
Multiple correspondents of The Irish

Gaelic football and hurling

maintain ties with diaspora
Sport Clubs are springing up in Asia and Latin America, writes Vincent Boland
An unusual event will take place in the
southern French city of Toulouse, which
looks likely to open a new chapter in
international sporting rivalry.
On November 15, France and Italy are
due to meet in the first Gaelic football
match between the two countries.
The Gaelic Athletic Association, the
body that organises Irelands indigenous
games of hurling and Gaelic football, is
shipping goalposts to Toulouse for the
occasion. The crowd will be small; the
GAA makes no pretence that outside
Ireland its sports are anything other
than minority pursuits.
The French team is exclusively
French-speaking, though it includes a
handful of Irish. And if the game is anything like the Irish version of Gaelic
football, it will be fast, entertaining and
a little chaotic.
This unlikely international fixture
testifies to the success of the GAA in producing what may be Irelands most
unexpected export: its indigenous
games. This is because the organisation,
founded in 1884 and virtually synonymous with Irish identity, retains as
strong a pull on todays Irish emigrants
generally highly educated as it did on
the generation of labourers who left in
the 1950s and 1960s.
Few other organisations hold such
sway over the Irish imagination. The
Irish language may be a lost cause for
the majority of Irish people. Yet their
sense of identity is deeply entwined
with growing up watching hurling (a
game played by two teams with a ball
and a stick called a hurley), and football
(the closest equivalent of which is probably Australian Rules football). If one
wishes to understand the Irish, one
must see a match.
The GAA is something of a paradox, a
grassroots organisation that has become
truly global. To get a sense of its reach,
stand outside the door of the museum at
Croke Park in Dublin, the super-modern stadium that is both the venue for
the biggest games and the associations
headquarters. A visitor will see a wall
displaying the crests of all the organisations member clubs.
There are more than 2,200 clubs on
the island of Ireland; 86 from the UK and
57 from New York. There are 28 clubs
that have sprung up in Asia in recent

Good sport: the amateur spirit prevails in Gaelic football Alamy

years, including Mongolia. There is a
thriving club in Buenos Aires. Argentina
is said to be home to an Irish diaspora of
perhaps 400,000people.
Many clubs have been set up by
recently arrived emigrants as a way of
holding on to something precious, and
staying connected with home.
The GAA is the glue that attaches
people to their homeland, says Jimmy
Deenihan, minister for the diaspora in
the Irish government and winner of five
All-Ireland football championship
finals with his native County Kerry.
Pat Daly, the GAAs director of games
development and research, says the
clubs springing up across Asia and the
Americas including the Hurling Club
in Buenos Aires offer a sense of
belonging in a world where you can
belong anywhere or nowhere.
The GAA has its nexus in every community, parish and county across the
island.
The first sports that most Irish children encounter at school are hurling
and football, notwithstanding the
increasing popularity and success of
rugby union. Every small town has a
GAA pitch (field of play).
Players, especially at the top of the
game where the 32 counties play one
another devote many hours a week to
training and practice on top of their day
jobs. They attract often huge crowds
Croke Park has a capacity of 82,300 and
is full for the big matches. The players

bring joy and despair, depending on the

result. But they do not get paid. The
amateur spirit prevails.
In a further example of the global
appeal of Irish sports, the 19th annual
Asian Gaelic Games, a series of mostly
football matches featuring clubs and
teams from 18 countries across Asia and
featuring both expats and players from
a range of nationalities, were held in
October in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
And as well as sporting highlights, the
event offers an increasingly valuable
forum for business networking.
The business conference has become
an intrinsic part of the weekend, which
is why we were attracted to it in the first
place, says Denis Cleary, a managing
director at Fexco, the Irish financial
services company that sponsors the
Asian Gaelic Games.
Were looking to raise our profile in
Asia, especially with the Irish diaspora
in the region, he adds.
As Mr Cleary points out, Fexco is
based in a part of Ireland the town of
Killorglin in County Kerry in the far
southwest that knows all about Gaelic
games, emigration and staying in touch.
Kerry has won more All-Ireland football titles than any other county. We
have our origins in a place where the
GAA and emigration have been part and
parcel of everyday life, Mr Cleary says.
The Asian Gaelic Games are a good
opportunity for us to give something
back, he adds.

I found every US president

likes to claim Irish ancestry,
including Barack Obama

Times bearing my name appeared on

the streets that day after I handed out
my business cards to colleagues,
enabling them to tell angry protesters,
Im Irish. And Ireland is not in Nato.
I enjoyed good relations with fellow
correspondents, but some Americans
abroad tended to look down on a
minnow such as The Irish Times. I was
affronted when one US TV network
heavyweight remarked to me at a press
conference in Jakarta, You are a long
way from home. I regretted not
replying, So are you.
But I got some satisfaction later in
Kuala Lumpur, when I came across him
in a huddle of journalists outside the
home of Wan Azizah Wan Ismail,
hoping for an interview following the
jailing of her husband, Malaysias
deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim.
I alone was summoned inside, where
Wan Azizah, who had trained as an eye
doctor in Dublin, sat me on a couch
and said, Tell me all the gossip about
[former taoiseach] Charles Haughey.
Practically everywhere I went, positive
perceptions of Ireland surfaced.
Chinese leader Jiang Zemin greeted
an Irish visitor by saying, It seems
everyone in Ireland has won the Nobel
Prize for literature.
In Moscow, however, during the
Gorbachev era, I was put in my place
by the blue-rinsed mother of a British
diplomat, who expressed astonishment
that Irish people were interested in
what went on in the USSR.
Being the only Irish reporter in the
Soviet Union had its advantages. On
my own, I was feeding an insatiable
curiosity among readers about
the crumbling Soviet Union.
This led to an anecdote
former taoiseach Garret
FitzGerald liked to tell,
about how he tried to
contact me in Moscow. He
gave my telephone number
to the Irish exchange,
without identifying himself
or whom he was calling.
Oh Taoiseach, said the
operator, Conor is
out, he will be
back this
evening.
Small can be
beautiful.

Wednesday 22 October 2014

FINANCIAL TIMES

Ireland and the World Culture

Struggle to
capitalise on
soft power of
creative talent

Culture Tourists want authenticity but institutions

are coming under pressure, writes Vincent Boland

ne damp Saturday night in

the middle of August,
something extraordinary
happened in the village of
Feakle, in the western Irish
county of Clare: the world turned up on
its doorstep.
The attraction was the 27th international festival of traditional Irish music.
The venues were the villages pubs and
community hall. And the audience
came from all over not just Irish but
Britons, Italians, Spaniards, Americans
and more.
This year, the festival a platform for
the best Irish traditional music performers featured the Irish Concertina
Ensemble, Martin Hayes (one of the
great exponents of Irish traditional
music), set dancing, poetry readings,
singing, workshops on traditional Irish
musical instruments, and a cili. Several
thousand people attended the weeklong event this year not bad for a little
place of barely 150 residents.
The Feakle festival is one of hundreds
of events that take place across Ireland
every year, drawing a mix of locals, tourists, dedicated festival-goers, serious

scholars, and the merely curious. While

Irelands cultural heritage is deeply
local, it also has a broad global appeal.
The countrys soft power in particular its music and literature as
expressed in its annual festivals, summer schools and much more, is among
its assets.
Ireland in the summer is one big
festival, says Sheila Pratschke, who
chairs the Arts Council of Ireland.
Or consider Riverdance, the globally
successful Irish-dancing theatre production that erupted on to the scene
during the interval of the 1994 Eurovision Song Contest and became the
unofficial soundtrack of the Celtic
Tiger the period of rapid economic
growth in the decade that followed. It
has been playing to sellout audiences
across the world ever since, in various iterations.
Irelands soft power certainly appeals to tourists.
Research by Tony Foley, an
economist at Dublin City University, found that more than
80 per cent of those surveyed said their number

Grassroots: fiddler Martin Hayes

and Dennis Carhill at Feakle (above);
Brendan Gleeson in Calvary
Feakle Festival

one experience on holiday was listening to Irish music in a pub. The most
visited fee-charging attraction is the
Guinness Storehouse in Dublin, home
of the famous pint of stout.
While Mr Foleys research may suggest that tourists have a fairly narrow
view of what Ireland has to offer, it is not
necessarily wrong. The pub is timeless,
and it is a very real part of the landscape.
The Lonely Planet guide says most Irish
pubs still offer a unique experience.
Many Irish pubs offer excellent food
and drink. The question is whether it
reflects modern Ireland the country
that has experienced an extraordinary
economic boom followed by a bust, and
is now going through a period of social
and cultural upheaval.
The collapse of institutions that
governed Ireland for decades
the political elite, business,
civil service and the Catholic
church on top of economic
collapse, are all contributing
to that upheaval.
Whether Irelands artistic and cultural institutions are up to the task of

reflecting such change is questionable.

The financial crash of 2008-10 and the
subsequent years of public spending
cuts have eaten into arts budgets across
the country.
This year, the Abbey Theatre, perhaps
the most important institution in the
countrys cultural firmament, was the
subject of controversy after a report
commissioned by the Arts Council of
Ireland and leaked to The Irish Times
appeared to question whether its productions really were the world-class
offerings it claims to show. The Dublin
Theatre Festival, meanwhile, has lost
Ulster Bank as its title sponsor.
Irish movies are also in the line of fire.
John Michael McDonagh, director of the
films The Guard and Calvary, caused a
furore last month with a diatribe against
the quality of Irish films, and his wish
not to have Calvary the tale of a priest
given a week to live by a victim of clerical sexual abuse marketed as an Irish
film. Im not a fan of Irish movies, I
dont find them to be that technically
accomplished and I dont find them that
intelligent, he said in an interview with
the Press Association.

Ms Pratschke says the strength of cultural institutions goes in phases. They

depend on the times we are in, she says,
acknowledging that now is a tough time
for arts administrators and institutions
that depend to a greater or lesser extent
on public subsidies.
The Arts Council of Irelands budget
has shrunk to 58m this year, from
87m at its peak before the crash. She
says a small increase in funding would
have a disproportionately positive effect
on artistic quality and output.
Philip King, a writer, musician and
broadcaster, says one of Irelands most
important advantages is that it has an
authentic brand. By this, he means Irish
culture is deeply rooted in the experiences of working people. Irish creativity,
he points out, is on display not just as a
cultural phenomenon but also in areas
such as technology
What Ireland lacks, he says, is the
strategic vision to bring it together, in
particular by harnessing the power of
the Irish diaspora and what he calls Irelands disproportionate cultural influence globally.
Just like in Feakle, indeed.