Poor web speed costs Ireland in startup league

Ireland has the third-lowest business startup costs in the world — a distinction we share with Britain — but weaker internet services mean the UK substantially outranks us in a global index measuring opportunity and entrepreneurship.

While Britain ranks eighth in the entrepreneurship category of the Legatum Institute’s global prosperity index, we lag eight places behind even though we share the same business startup cost of 0.3% of gross national income per capita.

Where Britain fares far better, however, is in the area of ICT — for instance its number of secure internet servers per 1m people is 66% higher than in Ireland.