Colin Zeal

Ireland has not built a society, it has built a tax jurisdiction. Ireland’s population is told it has never been richer, yet it has never felt poorer ✍️Sinéad O'Sullivan @SineadOS1 Ireland has failed to answer this question of what to use its wealth for, as it seems we did not know the question existed. For over a decade, as the corporate tax take rose relentlessly to reach €35 billion – not far off half of it accounted for by three big US companies – the country has behaved as though this bounty was a durable feature of the economy rather than short-term luck. The Irish surplus is the largest in the EU per capita, yet our infrastructure index is below Poland’s The 35,000 graduates who left last year because they could not afford to live here are not evidence of the system working. They are proof of the opposite. (When I pointed this out to Varadkar, his response was: “You’d fail my class.” Before members of the political class lecture the country on economics, they might consult the textbook – specifically the well-known chapter on how small states handed unearned windfalls squandered every one of them. Ireland has not built a society, it has built a tax jurisdiction #FFG #HowIrelandWorks #Society #IrelandisBroken irishtimes.com/opinion/2026/…