After Donald Trump, call for new focus on Irish firms

The Government should now devote more time to developing Irish indigenous firms rather than courting multinationals, which are vulnerable following the double whammy of Brexit and the election of Donald Trump, a leading economist has said.

Alan McQuaid, chief economist at Merrion Capital, said more effort should be devoted to keeping and developing Irish companies that compete internationally because they are not subject to the threats of the US and the UK slashing corporate tax rates.

He said a lot of the “artificial” accounting involving the tax arrangements of multinationals had thrown Ireland into a bad light, presenting a distorted picture of Ireland in the US as unfairly holding hundreds of billions in investments.