Many of us are probably familiar with the sort of ‘Out of Africa’ depictions of perspiring, gin-soaked, white English settlers attempting to run coffee plantations while juggling complex personal lives and ‘work settings’ in a hostile environment.
Spare a thought then for Fabien Bourrat, a ‘Head of Data & Measurement’ for Google Ireland. He took to LinkedIn to celebrate the fact that “In my current team of 9 people, not a single one of us is originally from Ireland.”
It is not that he rues the chance to immerse said team in the local community and culture. Far from it. “This is the beautiful reality of leading in a global hub like Google Dublin. We bring together diverse perspectives, cultures, and expertise.”
Not surprisingly this has attracted a deal of attention on social media, with little of the comment favourable to young Fabien. The take has been more that of Linda Hunt as Billy Kwan in The Year of Living Dangerously, as he observes the dissolute foreign correspondents in Jakarta witness the collapse into chaos of Indonesia, than Meryl Streep and Robert Redford.
Imagine if you will, as a sort of thought experiment, an Irish person working as part of the management team in the Guinness office in Lagos, Nigeria (now majority owned by Tolaram) posting something to the effect that “In our offices, there is not a single African” and that this was only marvellous.
He would be fortunate if he were to be allowed to buy another bottle of stout in a Dublin pub, let alone remain as part of the management of people who might with justification take umbrage at a message that might be considered to be a slight on the natives.
That’s not the case in diverse, multicultural Dublin, of course, where it seems that every culture and strand of diversity is to be celebrated other than our own.
Actually, that is not quite true but there is a growing tendency that what is uniquely Irish – the language, music, Gaelic sports etc (not Catholicism, of course, because that is taboo) – is insidiously pitched as just another of the diversities and that they almost have to be ratified by examples of the small number of people from overseas who embrace them.
All that aside, the post above is indicative of the impact of the major corporations, particularly the tech giants, not just on the economy but in radically transforming the very nature of the society in which we live.
ALMOST EXCLUSIVELY RECRUITING FROM OVERSEAS
I have looked before at the evidence that companies like Google are almost exclusively recruiting from overseas. A few weeks ago we saw how even as the AI revolution starts to eliminate tech jobs here, that the number of work permits being issued is increasing.
Meta which recently announced that it is planning 350 redundancies in Ireland, was issued with more work permits for people coming here from outside of the EU/EEA in the five months to the end of May than they were for the same period in 2025.
Back in 2021 Google itself, which was already at that stage recruiting 70% from outside of the State, was apparently planning to build apartments as accommodation for those employees. This, and the consequences of it as celebrated by our friend Fabien, is not a healthy situation for an allegedly sovereign State to be in.
It is indicative of what basically amounts to a neo-colonial relationship with foreign Capital. And that is not just some radical nationalist take. The Irish Fiscal Advisory Council (IFAC) has just published its latest Assessment Report which not for the first time notes what is clearly a dangerous and potentially disastrous dependency on overseas Capital and the tax revenues which it generates.
And which our elite have venerated in the way in which the primitive Melanesian Cargo Cult of the south Pacific used to venerate the gifts that were left by passing colonists on their way to more important places or were later dropped out of planes.
The Cargo Cult might be in for an existential kick in the arse. The impact of AI has already been felt in Ireland as the major, and not so major, tech companies lay off hundreds and have indicated that they are planning for more.
There is no plan B to deal with that because indigenous enterprise is largely either similarly dependent on the downstream benefits of overseas investment, or the sectors that might support an expanded domestic economy have either been closed down or deprived of investment funds both by the State and the financial institutions.
More immediately the IFAC warns of the sharp drop that is taking place in the proportion of the corporation tax revenues that are saved. That is because the State needs to spend more to deal with the consequences of population growth and all the demands which that places on housing and the entire range of public provision from hospitals and schools to policing, social welfare and prisons.
That is the stark reality of the demographic earthquake. And for all their talk about how lads like Fabien and his team from overseas are worth more to the economy than oul Paddy and Mary, the State has NO hard evidence from its own statistics to prove that mass immigration is a fiscal plus.
Indeed, as I reported last week, the clear evidence is that immigrants form a larger proportion of the long term unemployed than they do of the overall population. Evidence regarding housing allocation, the health sector and even incarceration rates point to other disproportionate costs.
No more than with the much-denied connection between housing and immigration, it is Maths 101 to understand that a rapidly growing population – 90% driven by immigration as indicated by their own statistics and projections – vastly increases the demands on State expenditure.
But sure, as long as Fabien and his team can bask in the “beautiful reality” of their Paddyfrei “cocoon” in their techie entrepot nothing else needs to be considered.
