Ireland looks to Chicago for investment
CHICAGO — Ireland’s prime minister threw out a sales pitch to potential business investors in Chicago on Friday, using the pervasive St. Patrick’s Day cheer to try to lure investment and tourism to the onetime Celtic Tiger, now struggling with a massive debt load and battered economy.
Premier Enda Kenny is one of more than a dozen Irish government officials on a global charm offensive over the holiday that also includes stops in China and in nine European neighbors. Kenny arrived Friday for a five-day visit to the U.S. that will include a trip to Washington to meet with President Barack Obama.
Kenny said the importance of Ireland’s connections with U.S. companies and the large Irish diaspora in America are keys to helping his country’s economic recovery. The Irish are struggling to reverse a 14.4 percent unemployment rate, slow a renewed wave of emigration and rebuild a battered credit rating that forced the country to negotiate a humiliating 2010 bailout.
“American investment in Ireland sustains 100,000 jobs directly with massive investment in assets and capital,” he told reporters. “And in return for that, Irish workers have succeeded in massive output, exceptional competency and real professionalism.”
On Friday, Kenny addressed a gathering of hundreds of business leaders and others in Chicago, home to a large Irish community. Chicago and its surrounding region carried out $8.3 billion in trade last year with Ireland, according to the World Business Chicago, a nonprofit economic development office.
“The contacts between Ireland and America are unique and we want to build on those,” Kenny said.
More than 600 American multinationals already have made Ireland their European Union base, providing more than 5 percent of the nation’s jobs and 12 percent of its entire gross domestic product. American companies favor Ireland’s English-speaking workforce, participation in the euro currency and, particularly, its low 12.5 percent tax rate on corporate profits.
Over the weekend, Kenny will take part in Chicago’s St. Patrick’s Day parade and attend Mass at Old St. Patrick’s Catholic.
He has sent 16 of his government’s ministers to Canada, China, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, nine European neighbors and several other American cities from Boston to San Francisco.