Colin Sheridan: Ireland’s independence is rented, and the landlord lives in Washington

Ireland has become the world’s second-largest importer of Israeli goods, because we’ve become a middleman in the transfer-pricing maze of the tech sector, a new report shows

The Google Docks building, right, in the 'Silicon Docks' area of central Dublin. Project Nimbus — the $1.2 billion cloud contract between Israel and tech giants Amazon and Google — runs, or ran, partly through Ireland. Photo: Paulo Nunes dos Santos/Bloomberg

There’s an old line about Ireland: that we’re a small country with a big flag — always at the march, never at the market. It’s the comforting myth we tell ourselves: a neutral nation, peacekeeping saints, standing proudly apart from the world’s imperial machinery. 

But a new report released on Monday — 'The Price of Prosperity - How US FDI Is Enabling Genocide in Gaza and Eroding Our Neutrality' — tears the veil clean off. It says what most of us already suspected, and what the Government has gone to heroic lengths to deny: Ireland’s independence is rented, and the landlord lives in Washington.