The affect of US tech companies coming here has largely been a small-scale version of Palo Alto-esque gentrification of a small area of Dublin (docklands) and any improvements in standard of living being limited to a small white male tech elite. Overall poverty is up (we're dealing with a very serious recent homelessness crisis) and average standards of living have dropped significantly in the country otherwise and reported economic improvements in world news are typical of our conservative government's focus on primarily export-based GDP figures, etc. over actual progressive population-based data.
I think on the other hand, politics aside, there is a definite strong movement away from the church at least, which I think is largely a lingering result of the various very public abuse scandals over the past few decades.
Edit: That NPR article is interesting in its focus on Cork. I live in Dublin, so I can't really comment much anecdotally on Cork, but with the exception of Apple, almost all major US tech firms that have HQ-ed here (Google, Facebook, MS, Twitter, etc.) are Dublin-based, so it seems an unusual focus in that regard.