How rich is Ireland? This is never a straight answer for any country, and Irish waters are muddied further by the fact that the most frequently used measure of prosperity internationally – GDP – is infamously distorted by a large foreign multinational presence. The starting point in any discussion of prosperity should be that people in Ireland are not particularly well off compared to our western European neighbours. While it is true that we have come a long way in recent decades – The Economist magazine notably described Ireland as “the poorest of the rich” in the 1980s – very…

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