From Producer to Creator, the Implications and Challenges for Ireland

摘要

During the earlier period of the 20th century, following a brief flirtation with laissez-faire economic policies in the 1920`s, there was a decisive shift towards economic nationalism and protectionism based on "infant-industry" arguments. This was in line with much conventional economic theory at the time. At the time those working in agriculture accounted for over 50% of the labour-force and agricultural based exports accounted for almost 90% of all exports. Over 90% of these exports went to the U.K. and Ireland was heavily dependent on imports from the U.K. for industrial products. From the 1930`s determined efforts were made to build up an indigenous industrial capability by the introduction of duties, ranging from 15% to 75%, on a wide variety of imported goods and the parallel promotion of industrial enterprises in Ireland. At the same time legislation was introduced to provide that Irish nationals must hold a majority of the nominal share capital and voting rights in new manufacturing enterprises. Political and economic decisions taken in the middle part of the century, like the negotiation of the Anglo/Irish Free Trade Agreement; the relaxing of company ownership rules; the establishment of the Industrial Development Authority to promote foreign direct investment, had a significant impact on the development of the economy over the following 50 years and changed Ireland from an agricultural economy to one where most of the top 10 companies worldwide in the pharmaceutical, electronic, medical devices, finance and software sectors now have significant and strategic operations in Ireland.