reland’s economy is “absolutely booming,” says Stephen O’Dwyer, the founder and owner of Dublin’s Tang cafe/restaurant chain. “But it has left people facing a very unequal and difficult society to work in.”
After a decade of low investment in all aspects of public infrastructure, when the only new properties being built were the single-dwelling homesteads that dot the countryside, Ireland is building again. Emblematic of these difficulties is a €2.2bn children’s hospital due to open in Dublin this year, but only after many delays and a budget that has swollen to four times its original estimate in 2015.The arrival of US multinationals such as Facebook owner Meta has boosted Ireland’s GDP but put pressure on housing.O’Dwyer knows from experience the cost of inaction. “We have just lost two guys because they couldn’t find accommodation,” he says.
But unlike the UK, which would need to borrow heavily to start tackling these issues, Ireland has the money to sort things out. But it may not be able to ride that wave indefinitely. Gerard Brady, chief economist at Ibec, believes the era of tax competition is coming to an end, and sees a new age of subsidy competition threatening Ireland’s success at attracting foreign investment.
Speaking in his office in the department of finance, next to the taoiseach’s grand office and the National Museum of Ireland in central Dublin, Donohoe says the government is working around the clock to revamp the country’s ageing infrastructure. Improvements in health, education, telecoms and the energy transition to reach net zero soak up much of the remaining public investment funds.
He adds: “There are 166,000 empty homes across the country, many of them outside urban centres, and there doesn’t appear to be a plan to use them.” Brady at Ibec says the state needs to step in to solve the housing crisis. “The scale of the problem is such that the private sector is never going to solve it.to do the new jobs because they can’t get a house and we can’t build a new house because we can’t get the skilled workers.”
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