by disgruntledphd2 | 2025-06-20 11:55:43+00:00
> ... because after Ireland agreed to implement the OECD minimum corporate tax rate (15%) same as everyone else, Ireland just didn't do as agreed, came up with some excuse (I would tell you which excuse, but they keep retroactively changing it), the prime minister explained in at least 5 extensive speeches how fabulous, fantastic and great he was for implementing it, and kept it at 12.5%. Then the minister of finance signed up to another minimum tax initiative in 2023 (the "EU Minimum Tax Directive"), in trade for EU money. In this they agreed to retroactively impose EU taxes up to 15% on all companies (oh and no deductions allowed to get it below 15%), and pay most of that money to the EU instead.

Can you provide a source for this assertion? AFAIK, we've implemented the 15% rate (but the profit shifting part died in the US senate, which Ireland is not responsible for).

> the zero-experience-and-suspiciously-young-for-such-positions-but-totally-awesome investement team [2]

They all look to be 40+ from the linked page (except for one lady who looks to be late 20's/early 30s).

> omposed of members of his own party that have been tasked with investing in Irish x business (please replace x with "the taoseach's new business" when making investment decisions and leave it out when publishing in the paper)

I really hate Fianna Fail (the Taoiseach's party) but Micheal Martin has never been corrupt. He is literally the most boring person in the world, but he's not corrupt.

> For unknown reasons, there is nothing on the isif.ie site about what they effectively do: steal money from EU hospitals, schools, pensions ... to personally enrich large US companies, and of course themselves. This is also missing from the government speeches on how fantastic they are.

Look, I get that this is tax avoidance in some sense, but it's worth noting that most US tech companies are booking all non-US revenue in Ireland (taxed at 15%) rather than Bermuda (taxed at 0%) for about a decade now.

Do you think that Ireland should have had to bail out banks with a debt exceeding the country's GDP? Was this moral? And then basically be put into controls on the part of the EU (who are the people preventing them from burning the bondholders).

Ireland is basically the most indebted country per head in the world at this point (the GDP looks better because of the tax dodging multinationals).

And lets be honest, the same multinationals would have found a different country to launder money through if Ireland wasn't there.

To answer the question above about properties in Dublin, this has a number of reasons:

1. post 2007 (the crash) housebuilding stopped for about a decade 2. Over the past decade, Ireland has seen significant immigration, particularly in the cities which has driven up prices 3. A zoning/planning system which is very similar to California and a culture where people object to the opening of an envelope 4. Lots and lots of investment in rental properties which pushes up house prices, which pushes up rents, which pushes up house prices.

Basically a lot of the above are problems of success, which Ireland is bad at dealing with because we've basically never had any success before.