Talk of recovery skewed by multinational activity

The Irish Examiner wisely cautioned readers not to get carried away with talk of recovery.

Professor John Fitzpatrick has said GDP figures have been completely distorted by overseas corporations re-registering as Irish. Tax inversion deals are also skewing the figures as huge corporations are “taken over” (mar dhea) by much smaller Irish-based companies.

We have good examples recently in Cork. US-based Johnson Controls has taken over Tyco and Pfizer has merged with Allergan. So $20 billion of undistributed profits belonging to the former will be added to Irish GDP figures.

Meanwhile, Eamon Quinn has pointed out that lending to ‘real’ Irish business has shrunk and questioned how they can thrive or survive without credit.

As Ray Kinsella wrote in these pages, most of the billions paid by taxpayers to rescue Irish banks has been recycled to the overseas institutions which lent it out in the first place.

Michael O’Flynn

Loretto Park

Friars Walk

Cork