Why is Google & Apple's HQ in this small country?

Ireland has become a hub for Silicon Valley's biggest companies -- but why?

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[rol]

I'm Irish and I'm emigrating because I can't afford to live here. It's terrible at the moment.

[Jack-xllb]

English speaking country, highly educated people, young workforce, growing economy, low corporate tax, EU membership are just a few reasons why companies such as Google and Apple set up in Ireland.

[omkarkulkarni]

Nice video in general but I think you missed a few parts
- A tech graduate here in Dublin doesn’t earn $100k but they start at €35k-€45k.
- A major factor for housing crisis is also the supply. You don’t see a lot of high rise buildings but a sprawling suburban area.
- The housing cost is high not only in Dublin but other Irish cities as well. So the Bay Area comparison doesn’t make sense.
- Apple is not even based in Dublin it’s based the second largest city in Cork.
- The city never introduced a rent control so the landlords were free to ask however the amount for new rentals which has gotten out of hand. This in my opinion is also caused by landlords lobbying in the government to keep rent high.

[ianwynne]

Hewlett Packard in France paid an effective tax of 1% even though their headline is 25%. There are always loopholes and derogations in every tax collection system.

[noelward]

Apple did NOT setup in Ireland in the nineties, Apple Macintosh setup their first manufacturing facility ( I think only factory where they made anything themselves) outside the US in Cork in 1982, today they employ 6000 people at that factory.

[anthonydowling]

Population of Dublin is over a million people, not half a million as he said .Greater Dublin is said to have 1.3 million and growing rapidly .

[ramifridhi]

God bless ireland such a nice country, irish people are one of the most nicest people i have ever met love u from a tunisian living berlin

[pozel]

You missed the actual main Google campus in Dublin mate. The building you claimed to be the main Google HQ is not. There’s another parallel road that has 5 more Google buildings which are bigger.

[francisconnellan]

I had to leave Dublin because of the increase in rent prices.I now live in Limerick there is a house shortge here too. The shortage of houses was not caused by the low corporate taxes but it did make it worse. Other countries in eastern European have even lower corporate taxes 10%.

[GaryWalshDublin]

Low corporation tax, English speaking country, well educated work-force, access to EU market- its an easy explanation for this. also Greater Dublin area is 1.6 million people

[neil.heffernan]

Some comments:
Dublin's population is 1.17 million, not 500, 000.
The Housing Crisis is not caused by tech workers in cities. There is a severe shortage of housing everywhere in the country, including the rural areas hours away from any tech office.

[gogovideo]

As a Dubliner living in diaspora, I have mixed feelings on this..

The housing crisis in Dublin is 100% the biggest challenge we’re facing.
None of my friends in Dublin live alone, a lot of them still live with their parents. You say that it can cost €3000 for an apartment.. the reality is, it can cost a lot more than that. I saw an advertisement for a bedroom in a 3 bedroom apartment for €1575 a month. To put that into perspective, that’s more than 3 times the amount I pay to rent a 1 bedroom apartment in Northern Ireland.

I had no choice but to leave Dublin if I wanted to have any quality of life. I was homeless more than once while living in Dublin, and it’s genuinely a struggle just to survive.

I am angry that I can’t live in the place where I grew up. I’m angry that I can’t be around my friends & family. I’m angry that what’s stopping me from doing that, is big tech giants coming in and fucking up any possibility of me ever going home.

The government are doing absolutely nothing to help, because the government are profiting massively off the back of the crisis. They’re profiting from the tech companies, and then profiting through purchasing rental properties.

Essentially, we get fucked in both ends.

[colmgrimes]

I have a few thoughts as a person who worked in a tech company in Ireland and maybe more importantly some from here. I will share them here I guess! To be honest I found your video well shot! But overly simplistic and its trying to compare the Bay Area housing issue to Dublins. Fair enough but its ignoring all the other bigger factors for the issue of housing in Dublin.
* Apple is referenced in the video quite a bit, Apple did not base themselves in Dublin. They built their main campus in one of the more disadvantaged areas of Cork City.  
* Population of Dublin City metropolitan area > 1million people. Unsure why you would use the Census population of the Inner city area. this area does not extend even as far as the ring road motorway (M50) that is the main artery of traffic that has to be crossed to enter the City.
* The Corporate Tax Rate is a massive factor for attracting Multinationals to Ireland. However this does not mean all of this investment in Ireland or its revenues would be otherwise in US. These are European HQ’s. It is just as likely they would be based in another European city as Ireland
* The 13B$ Tax settlement that European Courts are pursuing Apple for is less related to Irelands Corporate tax rate of 12.5% and more directly due to what was called the “double Irish” tax treaty. - Meaning you could base your European company’s Campus here but then subsequently move/locate IP in another - usually tax havens in the Caribbean like Caymans or British virgin islands etc.
* This practice was ceased by Apple in 2014.
* The last Point I would make is this Video is comparing the cost of housing in Dublin to the cost of housing in the Bay Area of Sanfrancisco and implying that the tech workers in Dublin being so numerous have caused housing prices to soar in Dublin.

That is quite the leap. Where as people earning more money in Ireland and Dublin causes an obvious increase in the money going into the housing market. It ignores the other side of any market - the supply! The housing crisis in Ireland is predominantly an issue of supply as well as other factors such as City planning. You will have noticed the height of buildings in Dublin while you were there. Little or no High rise.
Apartments, high rise, Condominium buildings are unpopular, less desired and were for the most part rejected or ruled against in Irish cities during previous economic booms. That is changing somewhat.
But this has led to inner city urban decay and outer city urban sprawl.
Ireland is trying to move to a more high density residential building.
However the pandemic and global supply chain backlog the world has experienced are huge factors to building housing in Ireland.
There is also the Irish cultural factor of owning your own home vs renting which Ireland has deep historical psychological scarring with.
The other factor not mentioned is the speed or rate of economic growth Ireland has experienced in the last 20-30 years. Not to mention demographics such as the high rate of third level education providing a ready made workforce and its younger population than other European populations.

I think you are trying to hard to make this the same issue as the Bay Area housing issue.

[timlinator]

I'm Irish American duel citizen working as a tech professional in Silicon Valley, California but for a Dublin, Ireland based company and just returned from a visit there. Ireland is the Silicon Valley of Europe but that has caused the same problems we see in California for the same reasons high housing costs and more homeless.

[dignamshane]

Funnily enough more Americans are employed by Irish companies in America than American companies employ in Ireland.

[Skill_Issue]

Moving things overseas to avoid taxes is what the US is built on 😂

[dc]

Apples first proper factory was set up in cork in the early 1980s . The Irish government fully backed them from the start.thats why they are here.and as well, cork is a rocking spot says an offaly man

[df]

The meta building you showed isn’t the campus, it’s not finished yet but absolutely huge. LinkedIn have a massive new campus under construction too. TikTok are about to take a number of buildings also.

[moviesunified]

This also true for Luxemburg, its a small country but it has all big corporations Head Quarters.

[aspenade]

Don't forget to mention that one of the reasons multinationals choose Dublin is that Ireland has one of the highest education rates in Europe.

In October 2022 Ireland has been ranked third for third level education among the 38 member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)