EMPLOYMENT IN US multinationals in Ireland has grown by almost 15 per cent in the past five years, according to the American Chamber of Commerce Ireland.
Speaking at the American Chamber’s Annual President’s lunch this week, Peter Keegan, President of the Chamber, said that since the start of the financial crisis five years ago, employment in US multinationals in Ireland has grown by 115,000 people in 700 companies.
Meanwhile, US investment has increased 25 per cent in last 5 years, bringing total investment in Ireland to over $188 billion.
Achievement
Keegan described this as “a stellar achievement given global economic conditions”.
US multinationals stuck by Ireland and played their part in full. We are not here just for the good times we are ready and willing to play our role when the going gets tough. The strength and on-going success of Foreign Direct Investment in Ireland is playing a crucial role in Ireland’s economic recovery.
Keegan said that in the competition for foreign investment, other countries are improving their tax competitiveness all the time and Ireland cannot be complacent. He said that the international tax debate has moved way beyond our headline rate and that the Government must not shy away from protecting our competitive tax regime.
Keegan said that while “we should not underestimate the scale of the task ahead of us, there are tangible signs that Ireland should now be looking forward again with some degree of optimism”.
“We’ve a long way to travel and we still face significant challenges in areas such as unemployment and our debt to GDP ratio. But real progress has been made, the long awaited restructuring of the promissory notes being the most recent example,” he said.
Keegan commented:
We need to restore our self-confidence to assert our national interest in Europe as we continue to negotiate a better debt deal. We are not the first country to make mistakes and we won’t be the last. But, if we continue along the current path, we may yet be the first country to emerge from the debt crisis.
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