“‘We are committed.’ That was the message Apple chief executive Tim Cook wanted to hammer home when he visited Ireland this week,” Ciara O’Brien reports for The Irish Times. “That may well come as either no surprise or a welcome relief to Apple’s 6,000 employees in Ireland, depending on how optimistic they are about the company.”
O’Brien reports, “Apple has been in Ireland since 1980, but with the recent loss of a €850 million data centre in Athenry, Co Galway, still fresh in people’s minds, plus the €13 billion tax judgment from the EU, you would forgive people for thinking the relationship may have taken a downward turn.”
“Yet, according to Cook, Apple is still as committed to the country as it has ever been,” O’Brien reports. [Cook said], ‘Honestly speaking, we didn’t come to Ireland for tax. We came to Ireland in 1980 because we saw a community we thought we could grow, and could do a number of things to support the continent. We’ve stayed on course on that over almost four decades. It hasn’t been a straight line – life isn’t a straight line, things go up and down – but it’s always been in a trajectory that is increasing. I don’t anticipate that changing.'”
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MacDailyNews Take: There are only two kinds of people in the world, the Irish and those who wish they were. ☘️
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Apple pulls plug on plans for Athenry data center – May 10, 2018
EU says Ireland’s Apple complaint will only be dropped if it takes the full $16 billion in tax clawbacks – February 27, 2018