How Ireland became the Saudi Arabia of siphoned-off global profits

Europe got an unexpected dose of good news on June 6th: its economy turns out to have been growing twice as fast as had been previously thought. Granted, the new figure is a modest 0.6% rise in GDP in the first quarter compared with the prior one, but Europe takes what it can get these days. Was this a sign of German or French revival after years of lethargy? Not quite. Look at the fine print and a single statistic stands out: a 9.7% bump in the GDP of Ireland. A country of around one-hundredth of the population of the European Union was responsible for over half the entire bloc’s growth. A casual observer of economic statistics might surmise Ireland had accidentally struck oil while nobody noticed.

This article appeared in the Europe section of the print edition under the headline “The Emerald petro-state ”