Most of the multinationals imported their components into Ireland and then exported almost all of their profits. About 40 per cent of what they did (paying wages and buying local products or services) was ‘Irish’. The rest was not. And this began to play tricks with the very idea of Irish reality. For most of the 1980s, while the actual Irish economy was in dire straits, Ireland had, officially, the highest rate of growth in industrial output in the developed world.
