The Leprechaun's Pot Economy: Wealth Without Resilience
Cén scéal? As someone who has chosen to make Ireland home, I find the country's current situation both wonderful and deeply puzzling. It's hard not to notice that Ireland has a unique paradox: a glittering, top-tier global economy combined with public services and infrastructure that feel far below par.
This is my attempt to communicate and unify opinions across the diverse social bubble I inhabit—from friends who have unfortunately been drawn into the anti-immigration and anti-EU algorithm to those on the opposite end of the political spectrum. The goal is to move beyond polarized online rhetoric and focus on the common threats posed by a political failure to match wealth with national resilience.
The Leprechaun's Pot Economy: Wealth Without Resilience
The phrase "Leprechaun's Pot Economy" is a fitting, if slightly cheeky, way to describe the situation. Ireland has a massive pot of gold, largely from the corporate tax payments of American multinationals, giving us one of the highest headline GDPs in the EU.
Yet, this wealth often seems sequestered. Instead of using those funds for strategic, complex, and long-term investments in housing, water, or transport, there is a recurring political instinct toward short-term fiscal prudence. This leads to:
- A Scarcity Mindset: By deferring large projects, the government inadvertently creates an intense scarcity in essentials like housing and healthcare. Every time the population grows, the existing infrastructure is immediately overwhelmed, leading to a sense that resources are being drained.
- The Political Failure of Reinvestment: This is not always corruption, but it is ineffective governance. It's the "miserly" approach—failing to spend strategically because complex projects are harder to manage and don't yield quick electoral victories. This political short-sightedness is what causes the national frustration.
Infrastructure: The Inviolable Law of Economic Growth
This leads to a fundamental point that every politician, in any country, should understand:
Economic growth cannot outpace infrastructure growth. The two must be planned hand-in-hand.
For any economy to grow sustainably, it must fit into a growing physical container. If the economy (the number of jobs, workers, and businesses) expands while the infrastructure (housing, roads, hospitals) remains static, the result is predictable and unavoidable: inflation, congestion, and a collapse in living standards.
In Ireland, politicians allowed the economy to boom—thanks to foreign direct investment—without making the necessary, matching capital investment. If a politician fails to grasp this basic law of economic physics, they are, by definition, unfit for the position of planning the country's future.
The Hypocrisy of Free-Riding on Defense
The paradox is clearest in the domain of defense. Ireland consistently spends the lowest percentage of its wealth on defense in the EU. This is not just a policy of neutrality; it's a decision to free-ride on the security of other member states.
This is where the argument about "sovereignty costing something" becomes essential:
- Unequal Burden: Other EU states—many with smaller GDPs, higher debt, and less strategically vital geography—invest significantly more in their defense. Why? Because they know that genuine sovereignty requires the capability to protect one's airspace, maritime territory, and critical infrastructure.
- The Shared Effort Hypocrisy: When the Irish state points to its strong contributions in peacekeeping, diplomacy, and support for causes like Ukraine, it should be acknowledged that all other EU states also do these things. No other country argues that its diplomatic and development work excuses it from the basic, costly requirement of its own territorial defense.
The Digital and Geopolitical Attack on EU Unity
The biggest threat to Irish society comes from the forces that seek to capitalize on our domestic failures by attacking the European project.
1. The Corporate Interest: Attacking Regulation
The massive tech corporations with European HQs here have a clear financial interest in weakening the EU. The EU is currently the global leader in establishing guardrails for the digital world with laws like the Digital Services Act (DSA) and the Digital Markets Act (DMA). These laws impose costly duties on giants to combat disinformation, ensure competition, and increase transparency.
- An obvious example is the reaction of companies like X (formerly Twitter), owned by Elon Musk. He has publicly labelled the DSA a "censorship tool" and his platform has faced EU scrutiny for failures in areas like content moderation, dark patterns, and access to data for researchers.
The algorithm that spreads anti-EU sentiment never explains that it is doing so to protect its own corporate profits from being regulated by the same EU it encourages people to distrust.
2. The Geopolitical Interest: Russian Destabilisation
Just as these corporations benefit from a fragmented EU, so does Russia. Russia's foreign policy goal is to break EU and Western unity. They know well that Ireland is the EU's weakest link when it comes to defense.
- Targeting Cables: Russian state vessels, including the intelligence ship Yantar, have been observed conducting suspicious movements in the Irish Sea near the vital undersea fibre optic and energy cables that connect Europe and North America.
- Espionage and Influence: Irish intelligence has documented Russia's attempts to spy on critical infrastructure and even cultivate agents of influence within the Irish parliament, leading to the expulsion of suspected Russian intelligence officers operating from the Dublin embassy.
3. Protecting People from Profit-Driven Standards (The Food Analogy)
To truly understand why multinational corporations dislike the EU, look beyond tech and consider something everyone relates to: food safety and consumer protection.
The EU maintains some of the world's strictest standards for food, chemicals, and cosmetics. This is why the European version of many products (from certain foods to cosmetics) often contains fewer potentially harmful ingredients, colourings, or additives than the identical version sold in the US.
- For global corporations, this is a barrier to profit. Cheaper, potentially less healthy ingredients often make products more profitable. The EU's consumer protection laws prevent them from using these cheaper ingredients in Europe.
- The EU's regulations in areas like food safety, the environment, and chemicals (like REACH) are designed to protect the citizen, not the corporation. These standards cost companies money, and that's why they oppose the EU's regulatory power—whether it's policing a tech algorithm or protecting what's on your dinner plate.
A Flawed System Worth Defending
The EU is not perfect, and it is correct to criticize it and work to improve its democratic structures. No government is perfect, and the Irish government is certainly no less flawed than the EU institutions. Reports have shown Ireland needs urgent reform in areas like public ethics and anti-corruption.
However, without the EU, Ireland's sovereignty and economic prosperity would be far more precarious. The EU protects Ireland by providing a collective security umbrella, ensuring the integrity of the border with Northern Ireland, and forcing a shared responsibility on hostile actors like Russia. Without the EU, Russia would already be strategically playing its game in Ireland, unconstrained by the collective response of its European partners.
Working for a stronger, more effective EU—and demanding better, long-term governance at home—is the only way to ensure the Leprechaun's Pot benefits everyone who lives on this island. It's an effort to save democracy from those who profit from its destruction