ECONOMIST - AUTHOR - BROADCASTER

It’s easy to be a little perplexed by attitudes towards multinationals, given their transformative impact on our economy, their complete upgrading of our industrial base and the enormous capital and technological transfer their presence in Ireland has facilitated.

Economically, without multinational investment, Ireland would be Albania with brutal weather. Politically, without multinational commitment to Ireland, Ireland would likely have succumbed to the populist, nationalist, protectionist disease that is afflicting most western politics.

Ireland’s economic performance can be divided into two time zones; premultinationals and postmultinationals. In the premultinational period, from 1921 to 1991, when multinational investment was modest here, the Irish economy was the worst performer, in terms of income per head, in western Europe. Not the fifth-worst, not the third-worst; the worst. Since the multinationals began to select Ireland as a bridgehead into the EU, from the early 1990s onwards, Ireland has been the best performer economically in western Europe. Not the fifth best; the best.

Today is Dean Jonathan Swift’s birthday. He was born on November 30th, 1667, in the parish of St Werburgh’s in Dublin. Last weekend, I was asked to speak at his cathedral, St Patrick’s, as part of the Swift Festival.

It’s not every day you share an altar with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby (or indeed, with a former president of this country, Mary McAleese). The subject was identity and, specifically, Irish and British identity after Brexit.

Given the enormous constitutional upheavals that could be triggered by Brexit, not just in Britain between England and Scotland but obviously on our island too, “conflicted identity” may become a political buzzword of the third decade of the 21st century.