US Inversion Action Impacts Irish-Based Firms – President Obama had been strongly hinting that the US government would react to the growing threat of inversion by multinationals seeking to cut their US corporate tax bills, and that came true late last month. In an inversion, companies avoid or reduce US taxes by setting up a foreign company in a country, then moving its tax domicile to that country.

The US Treasury announced new guidelines to curtail so-called corporate inversions, making them more difficult to do and less rewarding. The immediate impact of the US action pushed a number of corporate shares down, resulting in $10 billion being wiped off the value of more than a dozen companies in Ireland and the United States. These new Treasury rulings follow heated discussions in the US on companies considering moving tax domiciles to firms in places like Ireland.

Some of the impacted companies suffered almost instant losses to their share price. These included AstraZeneca, operating in Ireland, and Big Pharma firms Shire, Abbvie, and Pfizer, also operating in Ireland. Share price losses were also incurred by other firms in the US and Ireland.

The Irish finance ministry staunchly defends its tax policies and the presence of hundreds of US firms in Ireland, saying that Ireland has “never sought firms on that basis [of taxes] but rather is interested in seeking companies that bring real jobs and real benefit to the country.” We have not heard the last of this, that’s for sure.

Casino Plans For Belfast Heating Up – The UK’s Rank Group is seriously looking into the possibility of opening the first gambling casino in Belfast, which at present has not granted any licenses for such development, which would entail changes in legislation to allow a gaming operation in the North’s capital city. The Rank Company has met with city councillors and some members of the Local Assembly in an effort to gauge political and community sentiment.

Company representatives spoke of the financial and employment benefits to the city. The average annual revenue per Rank casino (they own and operate 55 of them in Britain) is $6.5 million, and the annual profit for Rank per casino is over $800,000.  The company went to considerable length in its meetings to assure conservative Protestants and anti-gambling elements in Belfast that they run responsible programs and would operate that way in Belfast.

In an interesting sidebar, the North’s Minister of Social Development, Nelson McCauseland, said the law would not be changed to allow Rank’s proposal.  However, he said that before he was recently eliminated from the Cabinet by First Minister Peter Robinson, in what was likely an unrelated political move.

A Warm, Triumphant Return for Boston’s Mayor – It has been an uninterrupted cavalcade of kisses, hugs, and smiling faces for Boston Mayor Marty Walsh in his poignant return to Connemara, the land at the Atlantic’s edge where he spent so many youthful holidays.  I recall former JFK aide Dave Powers saying how touching and memorable John Kennedy’s visit in 1963 to Wexford was and how the president spoke of it often and in glowing terms during the months before his death.

It certainly seems probable that Walsh’s friendly invasion of Connemara will provide the mayor a similar set of warming memories.  But there has also been a business dimension to His Honor’s return that has featured fresh conversations about increased commercial ties between Galway and Boston. The presence in Boston of so many successful Galway natives, many heavily invested in Boston area business, should augur well for Mayor Walsh’s latest campaign.

One of the stops the mayor made on his trip was to St. Patrick’s school in Galway to keep a promise to Sean Faherty, almost eleven, and a pupil at the primary school.  Last summer while campaigning for the office he now holds, he promised Sean, who was in Boston visiting relatives, that he would come to Ireland this year and would see Sean at St. Patrick’s school. The mayor indeed kept his promise in his only school visit and following a question period he was saluted by St. Patrick’s Boys Brass Band.
  
Ian Paisley’s Passing Brings Pause To North – After studying the actions and lengthy political maneuvering of the most dominant figure in the Northern Unionist ranks, I have my own deeply personal opinions of the man. Ian Paisley began as a founding minister with an unquenchable, virulent dislike for Catholics. He later became Democratic Unionist Party leader and First Minister of the devolved Northern Ireland Stormont government.

He was a man you could not ignore. As a politician and Free Presbyterian pastor he worked both sides of the street. People who knew him, or had spent time with him, characterized Big Ian as a charmer and someone you could work with on economic issues. John Hume, Nobelist and longtime leader of the SDLP, said,  “History will record his political career — one which took him from the politics of division to a place where he accepted agreement as a solution, the need for power-sharing, and respect for diversity. But history will also ask if he should have reached this point sooner.”

The accumulated assessment of Paisley was gentler by the Irish nationalist community than I thought it might be, and unsurprisingly reverent by his Unionist colleagues and followers. The tacit cliche about speaking no evil of those who have left us was generally in good operational form at his departure.

My feelings, always from a distance, were unwavering in the belief that he cruelly delayed a peaceful solution, or at least a pathway to one, for years, and while he was at it, his bigoted, narrow vision helped fan the flames of division and hatred between the two traditions in the North.

I also recall over the years his unrelenting, arrogant call to sectarian warfare, as his hate-filled dismissal of nationalist injustices became the IRA’s most potent recruiting voice. And lastly, I believe that his final conversion to power-sharing and the assumption of  a leadership role in the new government (as a price of entry) and his comfortable place in history was his last, best strategy to achieve the honors and recognition to a point where many of us might forgive, if not forget, Paisley’s racist rants and the thinly disguised pandering to give substance and a missing integrity to a regime that was more Argentinian than Irish or British. He was a man who relished keeping the boot on the necks of the Taigs. That anti-Catholic obsession was muted but not gone at his twilight.

Yes, we should honor the dead, but honor also the reality of history and a man’s decades of behavior.

Chuck Feeney Spending Down – The American business genius, and later one of the this era’s most ardent philanthropists, Chuck Feeney, 83, is nearing the end of his personal drive to divest himself of all of his Duty-Free Shops millions.  Late last month his Atlantic Philanthropies gave Northern Ireland $32.8 million to be used for the promotion of shared education for Catholic and Protestant children, parenting programs, and improvement of dementia care. The Feeney money will be matched by over $50 million from the Stormont government in the North.

Over the years Feeney’s philanthropy, targeted specifically for education, has enriched the Irish coffers by almost a billion dollars. Martin McGuinness, the deputy first minister at Stormont, called the Feeney gift a “colossal contribution. These projects will have a significant impact on the quality of people’s lives, now and for years to come. The legacy will be a brighter future for the most vulnerable in our community.”

Early on, Chuck Feeney answered a question about his ambitions, saying at the time “I want the last check I write to bounce.” Good man.

Did You Know … that contrary to the rhetoric of those who have been enemies of immigration reform and fair play, being in the US without permission is a civil violation, not a criminal offense. The act of being present in the United States in violation of the immigration laws is not, standing alone, a crime. While federal immigration law does criminalize some actions that may be related to an undocumented presence in the United States, undocumented presence alone is not a violation of federal criminal law.

Irish UN Force Stands Tall – The 130-strong Irish United Nation’s contingent has been in harm’s way in the Golan Heights observation mission where the living is anything but easy. But there have been some structural changes that have moved the Irish temporarily from their mission base in Syria to a camp on the Israeli-controlled side in mid-September.

The Irish, along with contingents from four other UN peacekeeping missions, were shifted because of the threat posed by factions in Syria’s civil war. The Irish Defense Minister has said that the Irish would not be dragged into a civil war where UN posts were being attacked. 

However, the Irish are confident that the next contingent of peacekeepers will again be based at the critical Golan Heights observation post and will continue to serve  the UN mission on the Golan Heights as long as they are needed.

A Few Words Help Push Irish Posting – President Obama’s nominee as our ambassador to Ireland had run up against the partisan gridlock that has made the White House appointment process a veritable battleground.  Sometimes, though, it’s stunning how a few well-placed words from the right spot can move things along, even in the glacial style of the US Senate.

After Kevin O’Malley, a Missouri attorney and friend of the president, finally had his Senate confirmation hearing, it appeared that there would be a further delay before the Senate vote that would send him off to Ireland. The 21-month delay re the Irish post had already become the longest in history.

Enter the well-connected American Ireland Fund and its chairman, New York hotelier John Fitzpatrick. Concerned with the uncertainty of when final Senate approval would be voted, Fitzpatrick wrote to two old friends who could move things along: Democrat Harry Reid, Senate majority leader, and his Republican counterpart, minority leader Mitch McConnell. Fitzpatrick, in his letter to the Senate leaders, stressed the long delay, the unseemliness of any further delay, and the bewilderment in Ireland at the slow process in filling the Irish post. O’Malley was confirmed in short order by a Senate voice vote on September 18.

Bad News, Good News in the Bay Area – Every year thousands of Irish students with J1 visas come to America for work study programs. It’s part work and school and part a summer under the sun in America.  Most of the visiting students behave themselves, enjoy their time here, and learn some things they didn’t know before they came.

This year San Francisco, one of America’s elegant cities, hosted hundreds of youngsters in rented homes, often just vacated by other students going home for the summer. But something went terribly wrong and a large apartment rented by seven J1 Irish visitors was trashed beyond recognition (the photos looked as if a tornado struck inside the house).

The Irish Consul General Philip Grant was notified and he, in turn and after confirming the scope of the damage, notified the J1 agencies and members of the San Francisco Irish community. The outpouring of outrage and embarrassment by the city’s Irish was instant and generous.  Irish construction companies quickly offered to repair the extensive damage, and other J1 Irish students, hurt and embarrassed by the harm to their collective reputation, offered help.

Other young people volunteered for repair and cleanup and still others offered to share in the expense of repairing the damage, which will run into the tens of thousands. And other students offered to track down those responsible foe the destruction. Consul General Grant called the response in San Francisco “amazing. And it was!

I was involved for a number of years in bringing over students for summer programs and all in all, the young people from Dublin, Belfast, Derry, Donegal, etc. behaved themselves, completed the Boston area programs, and returned home better for the experience.

RANDOM CLIPPINGS
The North’s First Minister, Peter Robinson, is deep into political trouble these days so he shuffled his cabinet. It’s a bit like baseball managers. Can’t fire the team but in this instance he fired some team members and kept his managerial post. Not for long, I think. … Shoot-to-kill by the army and the-then RUC is now, 32 years later, getting some attention from the British. …A Belfast Telegraph editorial asks where the mainland British are while Stormont and the NI government is into a meltdown. … Bad news for friend Rhode Island Rep. Peter Martin, defeated for another term in the RI Assembly. He was the good guy who was instrumental in getting a full pardon signed into law for an innocent Irishman hanged in 1845. … Give a cheer for an infrequent All-Ireland “double. Football wins for junior and senior sides from the Kingdom. … Emigrants from other EU countries in Ireland get dissed all the time. A Romanian worker found $4,000 when he was cleaning and turned it into his manager. Good Man!

Congrats to the New England Council’s Jim Brett on his well deserved induction into the Special Olympics Hall of Fame. … Short memories at Fox when criticizing Obama for his measly vacation time off. George W. (remember him?) had three and a half times more vacation than President Obama’s time off and even more uncounted at Kennebunkport and elsewhere. Get the numbers right for a change. … Belfast’s Lord Mayor has a city-paid deluxe BMW worth $90,000 (for official use, of course), … Taoiseach Enda Kenny, who’s been on a honeymoon here, rejected three very qualified females in favor of a hack male friend for a vacant Seanad seat, where Irish pols go to wait for the next Dail election. … The British are spending $1.6 million to make South Armagh, the old “Bandit Country,” appealing to tourists. Are the watch towers gone yet? … A really good Samaritan in Galway anonymously donated $13,000 so that children in an African refugee family living in a hostel for 6 years could get started on an education. Great Man.

The cost of a night out in Dublin is $105 and much of that for booze. … Maureen O’Hara will officially be honored by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts at the Governors Awards on Nov. 8. Maureen is unique, one of a kind. … The Gaelic Roots 2014 Dance & Ceili kicks off at BC’s Gasson Hall on the evening of Oct. 7 with more to come in November & December (email: gaelicroots@listserv.bc.edu). … Guinness is “going blonde” for folks in its US market folks who are not entranced by the dark stuff.  Should be available in late September. … A former Irish minister from Kilkenny, Phil Hogan, hit the jackpot. He is the European Union’s new Secretary of Agriculture at $400,000 a year, controlling the $80 billion EU Ag budget. Wow! … Well done to Democrat Maura Healey, a veteran prosecutor who will follow Martha Coakley as state attorney general. … Irish couples are waiting longer to say I do. The about-to-be-married in Ireland these days are, on average, men 34.7 years old; women 32.6. … The sheets are irrevocably torn between Martin McGuinness and Peter Robinson. Guess the second edition of the Chuckle Twins is heading for a divorce. … The world’s largest airline (according to reports) is Emirate Airlines, and they are looking to fill 5,000 positions. Winning candidates will be based in Dubai. … If you wonder why your eyes glaze over watching Patriot games, consider this: During a typical telecast lasting under three hours you will get to see a commercial message (AKA as “an ad”) every two minutes. Absurd, and very greedy by the troubled NFL honchos.