It’s been a good week for Ireland. Down in New Zealand the country’s rugby football team finds itself on top of its group and comfortably on the way to the knock out stages of the Rugby World Cup. Ireland has been punching well above its weight on the international rugby field for nearly a decade now.* Even the shock of the country’s devastating economic collapse has failed to dent the skill, artistry and tenacity of its rugby athletes. Nor do those same qualities appear to have deserted the Irish Development Agency, which this week announced that Twitter is to open an international operations centre in Dublin (the announcement was made on Twitter, of course).
Twitter will join other new
media giants that have fallen for Ireland’s charms. They include
Google, which has some 2,000 staff in Ireland, Pay Pal, Facebook,
Electronic Arts, Zynga and Linkedin.
Ireland’s corporation tax of 12.5% is certainly a big
attraction. It is of course English-speaking, has well educated people
and, following its economic troubles, has a very competitive economy in wages,
office space and high quality housing. All of this makes Ireland hard to
resist for any business with international markets seeking a competitive cost
base, good people and good connections. But Ireland has something else. It’s an
asset that adds lustre and value to the hard and demanding businesses of FDI.
The Irish know how to make life fun.
Many years ago, when I was
running an inward investment office in London on
behalf of five development agencies in Scotland, it was always a great
thrill to get an invitation to the IDA’s St Patrick’s Day party at its office
in upmarket Bond St.
It was the best party in town and always packed with London’s elite from business, financial,
media and diplomatic circles. Everyone was made warmly welcome, a glass was
never allowed to stay empty and IDA staff worked tirelessly to help guests make
new friends and contacts. Running a great party in a commercial environment is
not easy. Hospitality can seem forced and the hosts are often nervous about
potential cultural gaffes or upsetting somebody who might have an inflated view
of their own importance. The Irish by-passed all such fears by running a business
party in exactly the same way as they would a party in an Irish home. In Ireland, a home
is a place that wants to make visitors and strangers feel completely at home
and entirely welcome and comfortable. We’re not bad at this in my native Scotland and
the Welsh are no slackers either, but the Irish are masterful.
If the IDA’s work starts with
a big welcome and wonderful hospitality, it’s nursing of an FDI opportunity
leaves little to be desired. Like all the very best IPAs (again the Scots and
the Welsh stand out, as do the Maltese and the Finns) the IDA professionals
nurture and champion every opportunity; guiding a company through the
labyrinth, shifting barriers out of the way, easing paths, opening doors,
staying in touch, responding at speed; at every step giving the investor more
and more confidence that they’ll make the right choice in choosing Ireland. The
growth figures for the UK
and most of Europe make pretty grim reading at present, but Ireland is growing. It’s modest
growth right now, but the IDA is showing how vital a blue chip IPA is to
economic recovery and to building for the future.
*For those of you not
familiar with Rugby Football, I should explain that the Irish international
side is made up of players from the Republic
of Ireland and from Northern Ireland, which is part of the UK. The IDA on
the other hand represents only the Republic
of Ireland.
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