February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
By Stephen McKinley
Foot-and-mouth disease failed to stop a group of Columbia University Business School students from enjoying an educational visit to Ireland, where they went in search of knowledge, enlightenment, the Celtic Tiger, and a good time.
In spite of inevitable encounters with those white foam mats spiked with anti-foot and mouth disinfectant, the intrepid crew managed to make it from Shannon to Limerick, then on to Cork and Waterford, before ending up in Dublin for the last four days of their eight-day trip. According to the tour organizer and second-year MBA student Dermot Murray, the trip was a great success.
"In Limerick, we met with executives of Dell Corporation, the PC manufacturer with a strong foothold in the Irish economy," he said. Questions were asked about recent layoffs at other Dell plants around the world, and Murray said that for now, Dell appeared unlikely to continue with layoffs in Ireland.
After Dell came Cork, and the data storage company, EMC, and from there, the group traveled to Waterford, where they met representatives of the famous Crystal manufacturer, one of Ireland’s more traditional industries.
"We then traveled to Dublin, where we had a discussion at University College, Dublin, about what’s been going on in the Irish economy," said Murray’s colleague, John Stimpson, who had arranged the company visits prior to the trip. "We discussed the cultural synergies between Ireland and the U.S., and also met the American ambassador to Ireland, Michael Sullivan."
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One of the recurring themes of the trip was Ireland’s low corporate tax, which, at 10 percent, is much lower than the U.S. equivalent. That stands at 35-40 percent. "Everyone said that the low corporate tax was a huge incentive to set up business in Ireland," Stimpson said. "English-speaking Ireland is the gateway to Europe."
For Dermot Murray, the trip was not so much a new adventure as a homecoming: he was born in Mullingar, Co. Westmeath, and has been in the U.S. for seven years. Althoogh he travels to Ireland frequently, he was still pleased to be able to show off the economic advancements to his Business School peers.
"It is astonishing to think that 10 years ago, the founders of big international companies such as Iona and Baltimore Securities were operating out of small back offices at Trinity College and UCD," he said. "Now they are global companies. My colleagues are still absorbing what they’ve learned on the trip."