Assessing the role of the international financial services centre in Irish regional development

Abstract

This paper examines the manner and extent to which the International Financial Services Centre (IFSC) in Dublin contributes to regional development in Ireland. Since its 1987 launch, the IFSC created over 10,000 jobs and promoted urban renewal in a previously derelict section of Dublin. Although it stands as one of Ireland's most prominent development projects, empirical examination of the IFSC remains limited. This study looks specifically at issues such as the kinds of activities and employment created at the IFSC, as well as local linkage formation. Based on published data and research interviews, this paper shows that the IFSC contributed to Ireland's economic development at a time when industrial policy focused primarily on employment creation. To date the IFSC has proven to be a successful policy intervention, the routine nature of many IFSC-related activities raises questions about the IFSC's ability to become something more than a centre for back-office financial services.

Revisiting the ‘Informational City’: Space of Flows, Polycentricity and the Geography of Knowledge-Intensive Business Services in the Emerging Global City-Region of Dublin

“…Indeed, various levels of governance, from local to regional to national to supra-national, individually or in combination, exercise considerable influence over economic affairs. A good example of this is an aforementioned concentration of financial services into Dublin's IFSC, created through national government intervention and European Union tax concessions, and connecting the city with global 'space of flows' (for more details, see MURPHY, 1998;WILLIAMS and SHIELS, 2002b;WHITE, 2005;and SOKOL, 2007).…”

Space of Flows, Uneven Regional Development, and the Geography of Financial Services in Ireland

“…Since the creation of the IFSC in Dublin in 1987 (see below), international financial services in Ireland went from strength to strength in respect of the assets involved and employment. Three years after its creation, the IFSC employed 1,000 people, rising to 2,075 people in 1994, 8,000 people in 2000, and nearly 11,000 people in year 2002 (White 2005:393). By the end of year 2005, it was claimed 19,095 people were employed in international financial services in Ireland (Finance Dublin Yearbook 2006:2), many of which work directly in the IFSC.…”

“…In 1987, the Irish Government managed to get approval from the European Commission for the establishment of IFSC, basically presented as a vehicle for job creation and an urban regeneration scheme located in a dilapidated area of Dublin's Docklands (see Murphy 1998; White 2005). Under the deal, eleven‐hectares of the Dublin's IFSC site enjoyed a special regulatory environment, creating both a “legally and spatially discreet entity” within the Irish economy (White 2005). Low corporation tax (10 percent) and other incentives (see Finance Dublin Yearbook 2006:4–6; Murphy 1998:159–160; White 2005:391–392), together with relatively cheap and readily available labour, proved to be highly successful in attracting investment.…”

Boom, bust and the changing geography of Irish tourism

“…These industrial transformations have drawn a considerable amount of scholarly attention. Most have focused on 'leading activities' of the Irish economy, such as computer hardware (Van Egeraat and Jacobson 2004) and software (Ó Riain 2000, O'Malley and O'Gorman 2001, Breznitz 2007, pharmaceuticals and medical devices (Paus 2005, Brennan and Breathnach 2009, Van Egeraat and Barry 2009, and tradable financial services (White 2003).…”