Budget time is wish list time. Every man and woman Jack worth their NGO or corporate lobby salt will by now have submitted their begging letters and demands. The Budget is to be announced on Tuesday so it is probably a bit late to be texting your proposal for an Irish-led mission to seize the Antarctic.
Years ago – and I am talking 1980s people – it was all pretty straightforward. The Minister for Finance would announce measures that reflected the times that were in it. When the finances were chipper, everyone got a little something.
When times were bad, the people who had often made them bad were given tax breaks. The rest of us were told to tighten “our” belts” in the name of Prudence.
Fr. Seán Healy of Social Justice Ireland was a perennial Budget Day panel guest. He would refer to the ‘option for the poor’ and how that was being neglected here. He was to the left of the Labour Party and would still be to the left of the Sinn Féin dominated Left. They lose the plot because social welfare only increases by 3% instead of 5%, whereas Fr. Seán would be talking about there needing to be more than a few extra bob for the poor.
As a young revolutionary I was more inclined to Fr. Seán but even that was insufficient. The whole thing needed to be turned on its head. It still does although the shifting of the Overton Window on so many things – not least radical Irish nationalism – means that I am now in the entomological box labelled “For Roysh” rather than in the box file containing subversives of the republican left. I did nothing different.
Browsing through a pot pourri of Budget submissions one that caught my attention was that of the American Chamber of Commerce Ireland. This is the group that represents the interests of some 400 of the American companies that are based in the Irish state. Given that they employ over 210,000 people, they can afford to walk softly but carry a big stick.
Hence their recommendations put them a bit above most lobbyists when it comes to being listened to. The Register of Lobbies shows that the American Chamber has been an active lobbyist on issues such as employment permits with a view to improving “Ireland’s ability to attract and retain talented people.”
Last month, they lobbied the Department of Justice “To provide AmCham’s white paper entitled ‘Ireland’s Immigration Pathways: Driving Competitiveness and Economic Growth’ outlining recommendations in relation to the immigration system to support Ireland’s competitiveness.”
They are obviously supportive of widening the criteria for work permits, and that gets another mention in the Budget submission. The American companies based here account for a large proportion of the permits that are issued.
In 2024, just 15 American companies – including Amazon, Boston Scientific, Deloitte, Google, Intel and Microsoft – accounted for 3,909 of the 39,390 work permits issued for people to come to work here from outside of Europe.
It is hardly surprising then that the American Chamber’s Budget proposals centre on retaining Ireland as “an attractive place for businesses to invest and grow, and for talent to come, stay, and build careers” with the Irish state occupying “a central role in the global operations of multinationals.”
Which is a legitimate objective of the representatives of American Capital in Ireland. Whether one believes that it ought to be the guiding ‘vision’ of those entrusted with administering an independent state is a matter of opinion.
Of particular note is that the American Chamber shares the ‘Left’ insistence that housing targets are “reflective of needs both in the private purchase and rental markets for both current and future demand.”
Except that where the Left – all linked to NGOs funded through foundations backed by American Capital and one party, Sinn Féin, which received hundreds of thousands of dollars from Chuck Feeney – refuses to see any link between housing demand and immigration, the American Chamber recognises that it is front and central.
For them housing is not an issue linked to some nebulous concept of “equality” but part of the logistics necessary to maintain their operations and to cope with the inevitably increased immigration-driven housing demand.
To ensure that this continues, they call on the State to “Expand roles eligible for Employment Permits and continue to review and expand the Critical Skills Occupations List in a timely and reactive manner,” and to “Introduce a ‘Trusted-Entity Self-Certification’ scheme to alleviate processing times in terms of immigration and increase talent acquisition efficiency.”
The foreword to the Chamber submission by its President Liz Cunningham, who is a director of Google and several other American companies, makes particular mention of housing – pitched in a way that might easily have been copied and pasted from one of the opposition parties or housing NGO submissions.
For example: “the delivery of housing solutions will be key to enabling economic growth. Further, it is of the utmost importance that housing targets are reflective of current and future needs and are in line with the CSO’s projected growth of the population to 5.6 – 5.8 million people by 2030. As such, housing targets must be regarded as a floor for delivery rather than a ceiling.”
This is American Capital’s antidote to “Ireland is Full.” In common with the ‘open borders’ Left, the radically changed and changing demographics are regarded as a “floor” not a “ceiling.” The floor being several hundred thousand more immigrants and hence another “300,000 homes by 2030.”
All of which is driven by the official projections of population growth 90% of which will consist of people born overseas. It is not the business of American corporations to be concerned about the social and cultural and other implications of such unprecedented demographic change. Their business is making money and the more pliable and ‘denationalised’ the already anglophone Irish state is the better.
It is not odd that the American Chamber and Google and Deloitte and Boston Scientific view our country in this way. It is odd that almost the entire spectrum of political and other opinion regards this as not only natural but one that they regard as something precious to them all.
Both of the remaining candidates in the Presidential election hold to this view of our future and so does almost every single party in the State. That is decidedly odd.