A quirk of Irish industry is that Irish companies tend to be either world-class or mediocre. Irish industry doesn’t have a big middle class. The multinationals are clearly world-class. And in a few sectors like aviation and data centres, Ireland has world-class companies of its own. Then there are a lot of small Irish companies that don’t export. They’re not in the same league as the multinationals, productivity-wise. Germany is the country with the best-known industrial “middle class”. It has thousands of small companies, operating in a niche and exporting globally. In Ireland, there is a chasm between the locals…

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