We all know that the Republic’s corporation tax rate is the prime reason why multinationals remain in Ireland. Microsoft Ireland managing director Joe Joe Macri expanded on this point during an address to the Leinster Society of Chartered Accountants back in January. There’s only a 4% differential on the return between Ireland and eastern Europe at the moment. And the coffee’s a lot cheaper over there. “Where we’re at today is not a great place,’ Mr Macri told his audience. An over-reliance on construction was harming productivity in other areas.
Almost 278,000 people are directly employed in construction. That’s around 13% of the Irish workforce.
It would seem obvious that it’s crucial to redress the balance fast – but how?
One answer should be to think radically and adopt new technologies faster than any other country, thereby anticipating the worst effects of the inevitable disruptive technologies. The latter almost certainly will include Robo-Builders, the very notion of which should bring on a cold sweat across the collective groin of any Irish government.
Another disturbing sign is that China is about to put on sale its own computers running with its own processor and Linux – a triple-whammy threat to three of our mainstay foreign companies: Intel, Dell and Microsoft. It won’t happen for a few years, but it will happen.
So what to do? It’s easy enough to state the problem but of course the solution isn’t easy or we’d all be at it over cocktails.
But as I often say, people who have a problem for every solution, whilst loathe to offer a solution themselves, annoy the hell out of me; so, hoist on my own petard, I will have to come up with an x point plan of my own. Stand by for the bus to utopia over the next few posts.
