Eoin Drea is senior research officer at the Wilfried Martens Centre for European Studies.
Even by the shameless standard of attempting to claim every American president as Irish, Joe Biden’s April 2023 visit to Ireland was remarkable — not because of the U.S. president’s genuine affection for the land of his great-great-grandfather, but because the three-day agenda read more like a prolonged family bonding retreat than a serious attempt at forging deeper transatlantic ties.
In reality, Biden’s view of Ireland — mired in his ancestors’ escape from poverty, washed down with a heady dose of prose and poetry — represents an increasingly distant part of Irish-American folklore. This is old immigrant America: white, European, chip-on-the-shoulder Catholic; cops and firefighters downing whiskies as rebel songs bleed out from Irish bars in nameless U.S. cities.
This is yesterday. And therein lies the problem for both Washington and Dublin.
Irish-America’s sepia-tinged view of the country, coupled with Dublin’s multi-generational bipartisan links on Capitol Hill, has helped turn the Emerald Isle into a little piece of Euro-Americana — and that’s not a good thing. Rather, it’s resulted in Dublin’s lazy and increasingly dangerous economic dependency on Washington, fundamentally weakening its role in the EU.
Dublin’s now openly regarded as an unreliable mouthpiece for U.S. technology and pharmaceutical companies — not to mention a tax haven for U.S. multinational money.
Think I’m exaggerating? Well, while the U.S. gained 6.5 percent of its total tax revenue from corporate taxes in 2022, the figure in Ireland was 27 percent and rising fast — a surge wholly driven by the accounting practices of U.S. tech and pharma companies. Ten multinationals, a veritable who’s who of corporate America, now contribute over 50 percent of total Irish corporate taxes. And this concentration is amplified by the over 375,000 people directly and indirectly employed by them in Ireland.
The capital flows are so enormous that Ireland — with a population of just 5 million — can distort growth data for the entire eurozone of 350 million people. It’s why the Irish government and the EU no longer use Gross Domestic Product as an accurate indicator of Irish economic growth.
With an estimated 60 percent of its total tax revenue now associated with multinationals, at this point Ireland’s more a U.S. economic dependency than a sovereign European state. The fact that its non-multinational firms are becoming increasingly uncompetitive on the global stage is simply a further reflection of its divided economy.
The country’s Anglosphere, English-speaking priorities are also why it isn’t a member of the Schengen area — protecting the Common Travel Area with the U.K. — and why it’s struggling to replace its retiring officials in European institutions too. By contrast, Ireland’s the only European country to offer U.S. immigration and customs pre-clearance, allowing passengers to exit U.S. airports as domestic arrivals. And Dublin Airport alone connected directly with 20 U.S. destinations in 2023.
California may have Silicon Valley, but Ireland is home to its very own Silicon Docks — not to mention annual sold-out college games of American football, attended by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
Economically, the concentration risk is now so obvious that Ireland’s independent fiscal watchdog has consistently warned of an unsustainable budgetary position, should corporate taxes fall rapidly.
And yet, the worst implication of this unequal relationship isn’t even about tax revenue and jobs — it’s far more troubling than that. In desperately seeking to maintain its privileged position in Washington, successive Irish governments have unintentionally sabotaged their credibility within the EU.
Fueled by a seemingly endless vista of U.S. investment, the country’s become distrusted by swathes of its European neighbors. From data protection to corporate tax, from levels of defense spending (a minuscule 0.2 percent of GDP) to China, Dublin is increasingly detached from Europe’s political powers. And that’s bad news for both Ireland and for corporate America.
The issue here isn’t about diluting Ireland’s links to the U.S., or forgetting the importance of Irish America — as Biden well knows, shared history is a cultural centerpiece of identity. But rather than having another President Ronald Reagan wax lyrical about “the bonds of affection between us,” Washington would be better off seeking to rebuild Ireland’s credibility in Europe.
And this will require a little tough love.
While Ireland’s relations with the U.S. are personal, those it has with the EU are transactional. This is why the U.S. should be the one to leverage its economic dominance and force Dublin to take its European responsibilities more seriously — just like it was forced to do with London in the 1960s.
Washington needs to pressure Dublin to dramatically increase its defense spending and allow for the proper protection of transatlantic undersea cables in or near Irish waters. On China, Washington should demand Dublin cool its embarrassingly naive love affair with TikTok and other Chinese companies headquartered in Ireland. And on the EU, Ireland must become the new U.K. — a vocal, if often annoying, proponent of a deeper, more integrated single market and a smaller, more efficient bloc bureaucracy.
Washington needs to bring Ireland — and the EU — into today’s geopolitical age. This is why Irish-American relations need to focus on the future, not the past. It’s why Biden must be the last Irish-American president.
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