The IDA claims that FDIs spent around 10.4 billion on irish materials and services in 2009 - 1.8 billion on materials and 8.6 billion on services - but no further breakdown of what these services actually were is given. Accounting and banking may charge millions for their services, but those millions can relate to a relatively low number of people. The same goes with the figures for R&D, which are bolstered in Ireland because of the tax breaks available for R&D - accounting exercises for tax avoidance purposes. Michael Burke has covered this in detail on progressive economy.

Having said all that, the point I’m making here is that employment by way of industrial FDI has remained essentially static for almost 30 years. The argument usually put forward that growth in industrial FDI in the late 1980s led to the celtic tiger and jobs growth is pretty much baloney.

I recall circa the mid or late 1980s that the IDA’s line at the time was that we should seek/see added value through supplying the incoming companies with more than the labour they needed.