FOREIGN POUNDS AND PENCE
Fisher, Desmond
FOREIGN POUNDS AND PENCE DESMOND FISHER Capital from abroad moves into Ireland To the American reader, Ireland's unemployment statistics may seem trifling. But not to us in Ireland. This is not...
...In the face of incidents like this, it is hard to see how proponents of the death penalty can continue to believe that it is effective as a deterrent...
...The Government is insisting on a maximum 5 percent rise as part of a package involving abolition of car tax, a reduction in social welfare contributions for lowerpaid workers and £130 million in income tax reduction...
...By U.S...
...Economists have estimated that 25,000-28,000 extra new jobs must be created every year for the next ten years to bring the unemployment total down to an acceptable level...
...This would involve capital investment of some £800 million-£900 million ($15OO-$17OO million...
...If you are a manufacturer setting up in Ireland, you can get complex tax relief on all profits made from exports until 1990...
...The U.S...
...Father Greeley should have asked whether Christian theology and liturgy will be able to make Christians aware of the awesome mystery and paradox of this gift and give us the sense of direction, purpose, and humility to discern and follow goodness without creating a crutch, a fantasy, escapism, that allows us to avoid responsibility for good and evil...
...Over the past 15 years, some 680 foreign projects, involving a total investment of almost £.571 million ($1084 million), have been established in Ireland...
...Cooperative efforts on hunger and poverty are encouraging, but certainly Christianity is failing to meet this challenge in the abortion issue...
...All this, they claim, could mean a 12 percent increase in actual take-home pay and the resultant fillip to the economy would produce the new jobs needed...
...142 lost forever the fairy tale land of Eden...
...marilyn kramer ______Death on Demand_______ Raleigh, N.C...
...Jack Lynch, who was swept back into power last June with a record 20-seat majority over the combined opposition, has made it his government's top priority...
...workers are easily recruited and natural resources , such as the clean water required in many manufacturing processes, are plentiful...
...But heavy dependence on foreign investment has its Deimond FISHER is Commonweal's regular correspondent in critics too...
...Shortly after the publication of her article, Daniel Webster, one of the inmates of North Carolina's death row, took his own life with a razor blade, dramatically illustrating his own suicidal drive [News & Views, Dec...
...But despite the success to date in attracting overseas investors, the Irish unemployment rate at 9.5 percent is the worst in the EEC...
...very substantial capital allowances up to 120 percent in some cases—for tax purposes...
...In fact, the failure rate so far has been remarkably low and some 60 percent of new investment in 1976 came from companies already established in Ireland...
...The endless, specious arguments between pro- and anti-abortionists serve, merely to solidify these positions, while obscuring the one approach on which the majority could agree—cooperative efforts to reduce the need for aibortions...
...standards this would be almost a non-event...
...The point is that many hundreds of foreigners are settling in Ireland because foreign investment, on which Ireland's economic well-being increasingly depends, is growing...
...One way is by attracting foreign investment...
...They argue that foreign firms will stay in Ireland only until the inducements run out...
...A news story in an adjoining column, chronicling the achievement of a German or Japanese child in coming first in an Irish-language examination, might reinforce it...
...I expect that this kind of desperation and frustration lies at the base of much popular and legislative support of executions...
...But despite the difficulties, the economists are predicting a boom-year ahead with a growth rate of 7 percent and the inflation rate, which was as high as 20.6 percent in 1976, cut to 7 percent...
...This is not to say that nothing is being done to help the Irish economy...
...Thus, in our outrage at violence, we collaborate with it and encourage it...
...Lynch himself warned recently in Dail Eireann that the stability of society itself was at stake unless the government's pay-and-prices package could succeed...
...A state senator said to me several months ago with regard to capital punishment, "We do not know if it is a deterrent or not, but we have to do something...
...The people are demanding it...
...Fortunately, this is the way new foreign investment is developing, with a concentration on low-capital high-labor industries like electronics...
...Ireland's Industrial Development Authority is, however, confident that its past successes will be repeated...
...With a massive borrowing program in prospect to provide job-creating investment, a major challenge to reduce unemployment and the threat to foreign investment posed by the Ferenka factory closure, the prospects for the Irish economy might seem anything but bright...
...Ireland has had such agreements since 1970 and they have been largely responsible for keeping wage demands within acceptable limits...
...Chief among them are the financial inducements, reckoned to be the most generous in the world, offered by the Industrial Development Authority, the state body responsible for attracting industrial investment...
...The question, unfortunately is not that simple, sive industries are the most easily attracted but Ireland wants more labor-intensive projects to ease her chronic unemployment problems...
...We do not know how many murders are motivated by a desire to destroy themselves, but there have been studies which document increases in homicide rates before and after highly publicized executions...
...Meantime, foreign investment is increasing...
...A still more cogent argument is that it would be better to encourage Irish investors to risk their capital at home rather than banking it abroad as many do...
...Foreign firms are attracted to Ireland for various reasons...
...Where investment on that scale is to come 141 from is the major social concern at this time...
...training and research grants and easy repatriation of profits and dividends...
...But, we cannot discharge this responsibility without the knowledge of good and evil, and the traditionalists' claim to this knowledge is being seriously challenged by those who clearly see the evil in the unloving consequences of what the traditionalists call good...
...To the Editors: The article by Sister Lois Spear in the November 25 issue underscores one of the frequently neglected arguments against the death penalty, namely, that it most probably induces some persons to murder...
...How that target can be achieved by June next is problematical...
...COLLINS KILBURN Director of Social Ministries North Carolina Council of Churches 159...
...You get non-repayable capital grants up to 60 percent...
...But a deep-rooted conservatism and reluctance to indulge in risk-taking investment has to be overcome first...
...That such a dependence can be precarious was amply demonstrated just before last Christmas when Ferenka, the Irish subsidiary of a Dutch multi-national organization, abruptly closed down its steel cord factory with the loss of 1,400 jobs...
...The second major step to put the economy to rights is to conclude a satisfactory national wage agreement in the next month or so...
...Indeed, Mr...
...easily heads the list, accounting for 206 projects with an investment of £271 million ($515 million...
...Factories can be bought or leased favorable rates...
...Can Christian love become the impetus for a sharing, cooperating world...
...Perhaps 1978 will show more clearly which way the wind is blowing...
...This creation of jobs, especially for the young people—and half of the Republic's 3.2 million population is now under 25 —is the national aim...
...The newspaper cartoonist makes the point by printing the name "O'Hitachi" on his factory facade...
...But Mr...
...Can Christianity find a broader criterion for morality that will bring goodness closer to the loving that frees others from selfconcern to love in their turn, as Jesus did...
...Success depends on two main factors...
...Now, one in every seven of the 225,000 people employed in manufacturing industry in Ireland can thank an American investor for his or her job—usually in chemicals, Pharmaceuticals, electronics, textiles, or engineering...
...By exercising his freedom to choose, man becomes responsible for good and evil and can never be free of this responsibility to live the childlike existence of Eden...
...For 1977, the net increase in jobs is expected to be between 8000-10,000, after taking into account the 10,000 or so redundancies during the year...
...The plan could, he added, bring the country to a prosperity it had never before experienced but by taking the wrong direction il could be plunged into the sort of recession from which it is just emerging...
...Lynch has pledged his government to create 20,000 jobs in its first year in office...
...Or will Christianity remain a haven for those who want the comfort of a commitment to the loving Jesus without the discomfort of a commitment to help and share with their fellowman, a platitude to justify selfinterest, with love distorted into the self-righteous duty to save the world for our own personal salvation, becoming a force for evil rather than good...
...And the official figure conceals the real dimensions since it does not include schoolleavers or married women seeking employment...
...In effect, the trade union movement is being told that it can either have high wage increases or more jobs but not both...
...Countries which compete with Ireland in this field gleefully publicized the Ferenka collapse, blaming it on Irish trade union intransigence...
...Clearly, the IDA has no hope of achieving the 25,000 net new jobs a year required to meet the long-term target...
...One is the continued capacity of the Industrial Development Authority to attract foreign investors...
...The apparent contradiction underlines the comment frequently made about the mercurial performance of the Irish economy and the national optimism—or is it fecklessness—of the Irish people: that things are either serious but not desperate or desperate but not serious...
...In the Irish context, it assumed the dimensions of a national disaster and created a scare about the whole future of the drive to attract foreign investment to Ireland...
Vol. 105 • March 1978 • No. 5
