Digital Economies - is Dublin well placed?

Harry Palmr

Was looking through the FT specialist business site FDI and was struck by their best cities feature for 18/19 and Dublins place in the various criteria charts. At a glance it looks good and then you notice that Dublin has very little going for it in terms of sustainable expansion as things stand - nothing that cannot be fixed but will it be when there are apartment blocks going up with monthly rents starting at over 3000 euro? It's also clear that Ireland's FDI attractiveness is based on tax breaks rather than sound infrastructure and education policies (every location on those lists is a potential or actual competitor)




https://www.fdiintelligence.com/Locations/Asia-Pacific/Singapore/Digital-Economies-of-the-Future-2018-19-the-results

FreudianSlippers

Dublin (and Ireland by extension) are not at all well placed to compete on a large scale. Lack of infrastructure is a major issue that very few people understand or credit as a major hurdle in viability of Dublin as a major international city.

blanch152

I don't read these in the same bad way. Just look at some of the lists.

Top 10 Cost effectiveness - All are places that pay very low wages and therefore more likely to attract low-paid jobs, that is not where Dublin or Ireland want to be.

Top 10 Digital Infrastructure and Environment - at first glance, this would worry me, but when you look again, you notice only 3 EU in the Top Ten, and they are all from the Nordic countries. We are aware that Denmark beat us to the Apple data storage investment, it is one we are behind on, but at least little of the rest of the EU is making a big success either, so there is potential.

Top 10 Business Friendliness - this is code for lax regulation and lax planning. Be glad that Dublin and Ireland are not in the top 10 for this.

Top 10 FDI Strategy - not sure what this one means. Is this related to sustainability?

We are second overall, despite only featuring second in one other category and fourth in another (NY has a second, fifth and seventh, but is only fourth overall). That suggests that even in categories where we don't make the top 10, we are not too far off.

maninasia

blanch152 wrote: »

I don't read these in the same bad way. Just look at some of the lists.

Top 10 Cost effectiveness - All are places that pay very low wages and therefore more likely to attract low-paid jobs, that is not where Dublin or Ireland want to be.

Top 10 Digital Infrastructure and Environment - at first glance, this would worry me, but when you look again, you notice only 3 EU in the Top Ten, and they are all from the Nordic countries. We are aware that Denmark beat us to the Apple data storage investment, it is one we are behind on, but at least little of the rest of the EU is making a big success either, so there is potential.

Top 10 Business Friendliness - this is code for lax regulation and lax planning. Be glad that Dublin and Ireland are not in the top 10 for this.

Top 10 FDI Strategy - not sure what this one means. Is this related to sustainability?

We are second overall, despite only featuring second in one other category and fourth in another (NY has a second, fifth and seventh, but is only fourth overall). That suggests that even in categories where we don't make the top 10, we are not too far off.

List us extremely limited given the thousands of cities worldwide, also heavily skewed to English speaking countries and Europe.

Economic potential list is a joke, it's just listing cities that are already rich.

Larbre34

Capital (investment) is not a problem. Capacity and potential, however, are.