Of course in this case most of the development is not happening in Ireland I'd say that very little (probably zero) development is done in Ireland, but I get t

Of course in this case most of the development is not happening in Ireland I'd say that very little (probably zero) development is done in Ireland, but I get the impression you think that development is the taxable activity (I don't know if it is or not). However, there are 1,700 people doing something in Ireland (from http://www.idaireland.com/google/index.xml http://www.idaireland.com/google/index.xml, 1/2 way down): A site reliability/engineering team supporting Google’s European hosting and search activities; Multilingual customer support for Google’s AdWords advertising product; On-line relevancy testing and Google product support; Shared Services to support Google’s EMEA operations. As an Irish person, I'm getting a little weary of the constant references on HN implying that Ireland is little more than a tax haven. There is a significant number of jobs attached to the US multinational presence here, viz: - Apple: 4000 employees (http://venturebeat.com/2013/05/22/ireland-were-no-tax-haven-but-yes-apple-did-pay-2-tax/ http://venturebeat.com/2013/05/22/ireland-were-no-tax-haven-...) - eBay: 3000 (http://www.irishtimes.com/business/sectors/retail-and-services/ebay-opens-european-headquarters-in-dundalk-1.1372373 http://www.irishtimes.com/business/sectors/retail-and-servic...) - Google: 1700 (see above) - Facebook: 500 (http://www.irishtimes.com/business/sectors/technology/facebook-to-hire-100-dublin-staff-1.1253407 http://www.irishtimes.com/business/sectors/technology/facebo...) I could go on, but I have stuff to do, and I feel like I've already done more research than most journalists commenting on this area. For those interested, there's a list of foreign ICT companies operating in Ireland at http://www.idaireland.com/business-in-ireland/information-communication/ http://www.idaireland.com/business-in-ireland/information-co... Edit: Removed woe-is-me comment following a trigger-happy downvoter.