Ireland and the Celtic Tiger- another China?
Of all the countries I have visited Ireland definitley is my favorite. I love the beautiful landscape, the culture and the farreaching traditions. People there are so layed back and friendly. We had a great time in a pub one evening when a bunch of locals spontaneously started playing Irish folk songs – and soon the whole place joined in! Until recently, this was my perception of Ireland.When the country joined the EC it was considered undeveloped because of its agricultural dependence, its high unemployment rate, peripheral position and its small per capita income. In order to prevent massive emigration the government (once again 
) attracted foreign countries to subsidize industrialization – “from the outside”. And industries outsourced their manufacturing facilities. However, this was temporarily and lasted only as long as the tax and capital benefits were present. This also did nothing for the local people as foreign industries mainly were interested in exporting their goods instead of trading with the interior food and textile industry. Irish economy was not moving forward with this method. So they adapted a new one, the one that surprised me when I recently read it. The Irish government was now attracting solely growth-oriented hightech businesses which started settling down in the 1990s. Chip producer Intel, the producer of PC-printers Hewlett Packard, Microsoft, Motorola, the PC-producer Gateway. Dell Computer has upgraded Ireland as the production and distribution center for the European, African and Middle Eastern market ! According to Peter Fischer, Dublin has over 50 call centers. You can reserve flight tickets or a hotel room and get information from the support centers for the computer and software industry. Doesn’t this sound like China or India ? In a way it is, I guess. Only on a much smaller scale. And the people speek English.
I went to Ireland also, and other than Dublin, I didnt really like it. I went in the summer of 2005 I believe, and we travelled the whole southern part of Ireland, including where my origins are from. Yes, some places were cool, and Dublin was pretty awesome, but compared to other countries, this was not on the top of my list to go back to. Maybe next time I should go with you and you can show me all the good pubs and such.
Back to the article and your talk about the economy, I had no idea though about Dell and its participation in helping the Irish economy. Guess you learn something new everyday.
I have been to Ireland too and having relatives there that I stayed with during my trip I guess helped to authenticate the whole “Irish experience”. And yes there was a potato with every meal.
I see the similarities with India and China but I think cultural difference won’t allow them (at this point) to be like that. Ireland, for a lack of better words, is laid back and I personally have not seen a great move to take advantage of wealth opportunities. China and India are growing and developing because the government AND people want to. Of course this is just my opinion but I think Ireland is ‘cool’ with they way a lot of things are internally, not that there isn’t room for improvement, but people seem to be happy with their lifestyle.