Irish PM Kenny treads water amid surging economy
DUBLIN — Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny said Wednesday that his country is seeing the fruits of a tech-related investment strategy, but the good news for Europe's fastest-growing economy comes amid a domestic crisis that threatens his tenure.
"Ireland is a small, open econom,y and we rely a great deal on trading with the rest of the world," the prime minister told Paste BN. "We have to stay ahead of our competitors. As such, we've maintained a competitive and transparent corporation tax regime while investing in skills, research and technology."
Kenny, known locally as Taoiseach, made the comments during the Web Summit conference that attracts some of the biggest stars of the global tech community. The three-day summit ends Thursday.
His remarks are notable because Ireland only last year exited a $100 billion European Union bailout precipitated by the sovereign debt crisis that roiled eurozone countries since 2008.
Ireland has now emerged from several years of traumatic austerity measures that led to steep drops in real estate prices and salaries, as well as a resurgence of young adults fleeing the nation in search of work. Now the country is on the cusp of achieving an annual growth rate of 4.6% — the best in the eurozone. The eurozone average growth rate is only 0.8%.
"We've had a pretty torrid time in the last few years," Kenny said in separate remarks in Dublin.
The buoyant economic numbers, including a falling unemployment rate and increased manufacturing activity, come amid an escalating controversy over the partly state-owned utility Irish Water. At the height of the country's debt crisis, the Irish government spent several hundred million dollars establishing Irish Water, only to see it besieged with allegations of cronyism, unfair charges and chronic mismanagement.
Anger over the water issue erupted into protests across the nation in recent weeks, and Kenny's 3½-year-old government appeared to lose political control of the issue.
"After six years of austerity, people are at the end of their tether, and many simply cannot afford another burden" of higher water prices, Irish politician Joe Higgins told the Irish Sun tabloid last week.
A recent poll showed Kenny's center-right Fine Gael party has slipped behind the left-wing Sinn Fein. Irish newspapers this week are full of doom-and-gloom editorials suggesting Kenny's reign may be nearing an end.
In Dublin on Wednesday, Kenny was nevertheless in a celebratory mood.
At an event attended by just a handful of journalists and members of Ireland's investment community at the National History Museum, the prime minister announced the creation of 400 new tech-sector jobs, partly underwritten by Ireland's Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation.
The new positions include software, telecoms, Internet and social media. Under the initiative, eight North American and European companies — including Chicago's Sprout Social and San Francisco's SNP Communications — are expanding into Dublin.
Kenny, repeating a comment a chief executive told him, said, "(Dublin) is the nearest you're going to find to Silicon Valley, except that this is a major city on the edge of Europe."