Category Archives: Business & Environment

New content added to previous posts

I’ve updated three posts from earlier this year. Circle back to see the fresh content, or read them for the first time:

  • Former Irish President Mary McAleese on the disappearing Irish language.
  • Support for removing Northern Ireland’s peace walls has dropped to 49 percent, compared to 58 percent in 2012.
  • Unesco wants to add the Irish sport of hurling to its list of the “world’s intangible cultural heritage.”

I’ve also updated a 2013 post on Skelling Michael with a few links about the uproar over using the heritage site in the filming of the new “Star Wars” movie.

And on the winter solstice, this image of the Aurora Borealis, or Northern Lights, from the Aran island of Inis Oírr.  Photo by Cormac Coyne, from The Irish Times.

The aurora borealis as seen from Inis Oírr, Aran Islands. Photograph: Cormac Coyne

Poles top list of foreigners living in Ireland

Nearly 12 percent of Ireland’s population comes from abroad, the sixth highest proportion of foreign nationals in a European nation.

Poles made up the largest group of non-nationals in Ireland at 22 percent; followed by British, 21 percent; Lithuanians, 7 percent; and Latvians and Nigerians, each at 4 percent.

The Jan. 1, 2014 snapshot from Eurostat, released Dec. 18, shows only the top five groups of foreigners living in each European country. The percentage of Americans in Ireland is unclear.

The 11.8 percent foreign citizen rate in Ireland is about the same as when I wrote this story for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in 2009.

Celtic comeback? Ireland’s economic rebound

Ireland’s real GDP is now 7 percent above the late 2007 peak of the Celtic Tiger.

“The economy might not be able to sustain its recent blistering pace,” The Wall Street Journal reports. “Even so, Ireland is set to remain the Eurozone’s growth star.”

The Irish stock market is up 28.6 percent this year. The Street suggests three Irish stocks.

But the Financial Times warns the last CT boom “made the Irish a bit cynical about official economic pronouncements, especially a few weeks before the next general election.”

Biopharma leading another revolution in Ireland

Sure, they still make wonderful sweaters, tasty dairy products and popular adult beverages in Ireland.

But by the 1990s one-third of the Pentium chips manufactured to meet global PC demand were produced in Ireland. Now, the biopharmaceutical industry in Ireland is making products so valuable that they could eclipse even the Pentium chip’s impact on the march of history, reports the Dublin-based siliconrepublic.com.

A few details:

  • Ireland is now the 7th largest exporter of medicine and pharmaceutical products in the world.
  • Nine of the world’s top 10 pharmaceutical companies have substantial operations in Ireland and more than 25,000 people are employed in the industry.
  • There are 90 biopharma plants in Ireland, of which 33 are approved by the Federal Drugs Administration to export products for consumption in the U.S.

Read the full story.

Architect traveled from the Lee to the Mississippi

NEW ORLEANS–One of the Crescent City’s premier 19th century architects was a native of Cork city. Now, a new exhibition celebrates “An Architect and His City: Henry Howard’s New Orleans, 1837-1884.”

Henry Howard, circa 1870s.

Howard sailed from Ireland to New York in 1836, moving to Louisiana the following year, not long after fellow Irishman and architect James Gallier Sr. arrived in the city. At the time, New Orleans was America’s third largest city, a bustling trade hub, albeit one driven by slave labor.

Howard studied at the the Cork Mechanic’s Institute before his emigration. In New Orleans and the surrounding area he designed some 240 homes, factories, churches, orphanages and commercial buildings through the Civil War and Reconstruction.

The exhibit runs through April 3, 2016, at The Historic New Orleans Collection on Royal Street in the French Quarter. There’s also a new companion book, “Henry Howard: Louisiana’s Architect.”

Here’s a story and photos about the book from nola.com. And some background on the history of the Irish in New Orleans.

“Fresh Start” announced for Northern Ireland

The British and Irish governments have announced a new political accord to overcome various crises in Northern Ireland. The North’s two main parties,  the DUP and Sinn Féin, are backing the agreement.

The 68-page agreement, entitled A Fresh Start for Northern Ireland, follows 10 weeks of intensive negotiations. Among the highlights, the deal:

  • reduces the corporate tax rate in Northern Ireland to 12.5 percent by 2018, in line with the Republic of Ireland;
  • provides and additional £500 million to tackle issues unique to Northern Ireland, including efforts on the removal of peace walls;
  • creates new obligations for the N.I. parties to end paramilitarism, and also targets organized and cross-border crime;
  • addresses the issue of flags and parades in the future, but NOT how to deal with the past;
  • reforms the Stormont Assembly, including its size, the number of departments and the use of petitions of concern as a form of opposition.

Read the full agreement.

First-day coverage from:

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Ireland ranks 10th in “Prosperity Index”

Ireland ranks 10th in the 2015 Legatum Prosperity Index, an assessment of 142 countries based on economy, enterprise and opportunity, governance, education, health, safety and security, personal freedom and social capital.

Ireland moved two places higher than last year, matching the 10th place ranking of 2012 but shy of the ninth place finish in 2009. The latest ranking puts Ireland ahead of 11th-ranked United States and behind ninth place Finland.

The rankings are based on 90 variables across the eight major categories. Here’s the detailed report for Ireland.

Also, a recent European Central Bank report shows that Irish citizens lost more of their personal wealth than those from any other Eurozone country in the aftermath of the financial crash, says the Irish Independent. The ECB report covers the years 2009 to 2013.

Tampa mayor seeks stronger economic ties with Ireland

Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn positions himself in the long line of Irish-American  political figures. During his first term in office he instituted the Mayor’s River O’ Green Fest, coloring the Hillsborough River a fine shade of emerald.

Now in his second term and with an eye on the Florida governorship, Buckhorn and other Tampa Bay officials have just returned from an economic development trip to Ireland. At a press conference, he said diversity is a key to success:

“Dublin, in particular, is a great role model for what Tampa could become. In 2000, everyone looked like me. You walk around Dublin now, and you hear a multiplicity of languages and see different ethnicities and a lot of young people. They have done exactly what we are attempting to do here.”

As a former resident who maintains personal, professional and property relationships with the Florida city, I hope Buckhorn’s efforts to improve ties with Ireland are successful.

If only those old bones could tell their story

Irish Central‘s Cathy Hayes has posted two stories about how cholera epidemics in the 1830s claimed the lives of Irish citizens on both sides of the Atlantic.

In an odd coincidence, the resulting mass graves are each next to railways.

One story is about Duffy’s Cut, a stretch of railroad 30 miles west of Philadelphia. There’s an ongoing dispute as to whether the nearly 60 workers interred in the small plot next to the tracks died of cholera, were murdered for fear of carrying the infection, or a combination of both.

Dan Barry of The New York Times wrote an excellent piece about Duffy’s Cut in March 2013. An hour-long PBS documentary is posted below.

The other story details the recent discovery of a mass grave in Dublin city center, near a Luas tram line expansion project. The burial plot is believed to be overflow from a nearby hospital cemetery that was unable to handle the death toll as the disease ripped through Dublin’s squalid tenements more than 180 years ago.

Experts are still examining how much the planned construction will disturb the burial site, and it remains unknown how many people were interred in the mass grave.

Aer Lingus sale finalized

The Irish Times on 18 August 2015 reports:

It’s the end of an era as more than 95 per cent of Aer Lingus shareholders vote in favour of an acquisition by British Airways owner IAG, thus formally bringing to an end almost 80 years of state involvement in the airline. … The €1.5bn sale is now irreversible.