Ambassador Foley Addresses Dun Laoghaire Rathdown Chamber

Ambassador Foley (Center) with Cllr Denis O’Callaghan and Brian Crawford

Over 100 Chamber members and guests attended the Ambassador Foley’s Luncheon at the Fitzpatrick Castle Hotel on 7th November 2007.  Cllr Denis O’Callaghan opened discussion by Mr. Foley, to Dun Laoghaire Rathdown.  The Cathaoirleach followed with comments emphasising the County Council’s commitment to enhancing the effectiveness of public services.
 
Ambassador Foley, with extensive experience in banking and finance and degrees from Harvard and the Harvard Business School, then spoke on the global challenges facing businesses in Ireland over the coming decade.   His comments analyzed the factors that enabled the Irish economy to grow at a phenomenal pace over the last twenty years.  These included a young well educated population, pro-business governmental policies, governmental and labour stability, an English speaking population, EU membership, EU grants, low-cost labour and land, and low corporate taxes.
 

Ambassador Foley Addressing Dun Laoghaire Rathdown Chamber

The Ambassador then proceeded to discuss the challenges facing the Irish economy.  Land and labour costs now make Ireland a high cost place to do business.  Business expansion faces infrastructure deficiencies in key areas such as electricity supplies, the availability of broad band Internet and congestion impacting the movement of goods and people.   He also noted changes in global markets and the diminution of Ireland’s competitiveness in other key areas.  New Eastern European members of the EU offer more favourable corporate tax rates and lower cost land and labour while manufacturing is increasingly pressed too compete with low cost countries such as India and China.
 
Ambassador Foley completed his comments by emphasising the areas where Ireland remains highly competitive.  English is increasingly the language of world commerce and English speaking countries will continue to benefit from that fact.  Ireland continues to have a well educated and productive work force.  Governmental policy remains favourable for business.  Ireland is a viewed by the business world as a very stable location in which to invest when compared to most other parts of the world.
 
The Ambassador closed by expressing his belief that the people of Ireland will continue to build on these and other strengths and successfully transition to an increasingly knowledge based economy.