Five years ago this week, I made my way to the Department of Finance to interview Paschal Donohoe.  

Budget 2020 was just 16 days away and Donohoe was double-jobbing as both minister for finance and minister for public expenditure and reform. His diary was crammed with budgetary meetings. Yet he honoured a longstanding commitment to give an interview to The Currency in its first week after the site’s launch.

That budget was crafted against the backdrop of Brexit, a growing housing crisis, a proposed realignment of international corporate tax rules and an increasingly depressed global economy, brimming with tariffs, trade wars and gloomy economic indicators.

Yet, Ireland had full employment. The economy was growing strongly. Tax receipts were surging. The economic consensus was that the Irish economy was either on the cusp of overheating or on the verge of a Brexit-induced crash.

As it turned out, those were simpler times. 

Last week, I went back to the same building. 

To get there, I walked by the Grand Canal, through the claustrophobic barriers erected in recent months to prevent homeless migrants from pitching tents along the canal. 

To access Merrion Street, I had to show my credentials to get past the steel barricades installed to stop protestors objecting to migrants being here at all.

In all likelihood, the protestors and the tents just moved elsewhere.

During the intervening years, Covid changed the world we live in, and how we look at it.   

There has been war, a cost-of-living crisis fuelled by war, and yet more war. The far right is on the march across the continent. The world is a smaller place, but one that is harder to understand.

Yet here in Ireland, there is still full employment. The economy still grows strongly. Tax receipts continue to surge. If anything, the problem is that the country has too much money, and not enough capacity to deploy it efficiently.

The international tax code has been overhauled. As it turns out, Ireland was the biggest winner. Brexit has normalised – although everyone lost. The housing crisis remains, well, a crisis.

Ireland needs to do something. The Apple money will not fund it all. But it will certainly contribute the deposit towards it.  

Donohoe is still double-jobbing, although these days he combines his role as public expenditure and reform minister with the presidency of the Eurogroup.

In the interview, published yesterday, Donohoe spoke about countering right-wing populism, the contentious cap on Dublin airport, the Apple tax windfall, and Budget 2025.  

However, it is worth dwelling upon the view he articulated about where the Irish economy will be in the coming years, and the steps that we need to take to get there. 

The current economic model is based on foreign direct investment.

The way Donohoe sees it, the next pillar of the economy will be based around the export of clean energy.

He expressed his views about the future within the context of a wider discussion about the deployment of the Apple tax windfall. As such, it also offered a deep insight into how the bounty might be directed.

Donohoe said Ireland had moved from exporting its people to exporting food to being an exporter of services and goods. 

“We want to keep that and add onto that the export of clean energy. And I believe that is an economic opportunity for Ireland that is at least equal to any of the other economic opportunities that my predecessors identified,” he said.

“When Sean Lemass, when TK Whitaker talked about the economic opportunity of opening up Ireland, when my predecessors in the nineties talked about the opportunity for foreign direct investment, I believe the energy opportunity for Ireland is comparable to all of that.” 

Donohoe said that Ireland needed to build out the infrastructure and build up the expertise to make that happen.

He acknowledged that it would require an investment far in excess of the Apple money.

“This is a question of regarding how we can decarbonise our economy, but do so in a way that creates a new form of competitiveness for Ireland. And it is a really complex challenge – but it is one that we have the natural resources to do. And it is at the heart of the big investment decision that Ireland needs to make. And it will involve trade-offs and difficult decisions,” he said. 

“But I believe it will enable us to not only do the right thing by our daughters and sons, it will enable us to create the kind of opportunities for them that our generation began to experience when our economy opened up.”

The last number of years have been so beset with crises that it has been hard to plan for the future. It is comforting to hear Donohoe talking about the next big idea because the last number of years have also shown how fragile economies can be. 

Donohoe argues that a major multi-year push into clean energy development will also aid domestic businesses.

“If we can make that happen in terms of the energy change that we need to make, the opportunities that that means for every part of our domestic economy by the access to energy, by in the medium to long term the affordability of that energy, and then all the opportunities that will be created by having that industry develop in Ireland in the medium to long term, I believe that will really, really help,” he told me.

This plan will require massive capital investment, and sustained investment in the national grid.

But Ireland needs to do something. The Apple money will not fund it all. But it will certainly contribute the deposit towards it.  

The last five years have been consumed by change. 

That change will only accelerate as we move forward.

Ireland needs to be ready.

Elsewhere last week…

Over the past number of weeks, we have covered events at the Press Up hospitality group extensively, with Thomas mapping out the labyrinthine corporate structure behind the restaurant and pub group. Last week, we were the first to reveal that Cheyne Capital, which is owed €45 million, had installed receivers to three well-known restaurant chains within the group, Wagamama, Wowburger and Elephant & Castle. Analysing the move, Thomas explained how the lender planned to deleverage Press Up and refocus it on its best Dublin venues. 

Joanna Rees has been an investment banker, a venture capitalist, a restaurateur and a gymnast. She even ran for mayor of San Francisco. Now chair of venture studio West Global, she told me last week how her many lives thread together and detailed the importance of building a brand.

In another life, Ross Finegan may have been better known for his exploits on the rugby pitch than his sterling investing career. The 54-year-old Dubliner worked his way up through the Irish schools system and earned a brace of full Leinster caps before a gruesome knee injury brought his playing days to a skidding halt. He is now the co-founder of London PE firm Lonsdale Capital. He talked about its Irish ambitions with Michael. 

In the first part of a new series on Irish voices in American business and culture ahead of the US election, Hannah McCarthy spoke to the venture capitalist Finn Murphy. His firm Nebular started as a one-man-band in a Manhattan shared office, and is now betting on AI and emerging tech start-ups. 

Founded by the late Chuck Feeney, General Atlantic has $83 billion of assets under management. Martín Escobari, its co-president and global head of growth equity, told me about the firm’s investment thesis, what it looks for in an entrepreneur, and discovering hidden gems.