Ask HN: Anyone moving their company out of the UK following Brexit? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Anyone moving their company out of the UK following Brexit?

86 pointsKeats85 comments

Between Brexit, the Snooper's Charter and the fact that we are 2 EU migrants we are thinking of moving our company out of the UK.

I've seen a few places that look interesting and would fit our requirements (basically being able to do everything in english and not having to live there):

- Ireland

- Estonia (saw http://howtostayin.eu/ this morning)

- Singapore (https://blog.ghost.org/moving-to-singapore/ for an example)

Any other place in the EU with a good track record on surveillance laws would be good as well.

Is anyone in the same situation or has done this kind of move?

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I know this might sound ignorant but can you not stay in the UK and just trade with the EU? I mean I buy stuff from European countries and I'm in the US. Why can't you?

I'm the 2nd part of this. We're not making any rash decisions and staying is one option.

It's not just brexit: We have an end-to-end encryption product and we're really super unclear on what the new IP bill means. It looks invasive and we're not keen on waiting to find out.

The US has trade agreements with the EU. The UK does not because it is part of the EU and will have to negotiate them. It's probably going to be hard to negotiate with people who all want to make an example of how bad an idea it is to leave the EU.

The short of it is there is uncertainty and investments hates uncertainty.

the UK will have to renegotiate a trade agreement with the US, but part of the brexit argument is that the UK will be able to separately pursue a trade agreement with India, which has been held up for a decade or so in the EU. The EU is notoriously slow and has relatively few trade agreements (compared to other 'developed' entities) so, outside of the eurocentric perspective, i.e. looking toward the broader world like china, japan, india, africa, south america, being out of the EU is potentially a better choice for the UK.

One can imagine having favorable trade and immigration deals with India could be really great for IT in the UK.

Michael Dougan argues it will be very difficult for the UK to arrange trade agreements within a short time period, as they hardly have enough competent negotiators: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USTypBKEd8Y

the EU sets the bar very low for rate of executing trade agreements.

A trade agreement is not required for trade, at least as far as I understand it. The absence of one just means you have more flexibility (subject to WTO restrictions) in applying tariffs, but with a weaker pound tariffs become less relevant.

Yes, but that's a far cry from the current single market. You can bet that Brussels is not going to let the UK have access to the single market without huge concessions. Concessions that undermine the whole reason for Brexit.

It looks like the WTO rules could be expensive:

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-eu-wto-idUSKCN0YG1...

An added kicker is that the UK currently has no trade negotiators because they haven't had to negotiate their own deals in a couple generations. They'll need to get up to speed very quickly with a very large number of negotiators. You don't usually have to negotiate all your agreements at once!

If the pound remains weak, then even with tariffs, UK exports to the EU could be cheaper than they were pre-Brexit, no concessions needed.

I concede to greater minds than mine, but those minds are estimating something in the range of a 2-3% impact in the long term, nothing drastic. I'm unclear about the reasoning behind the doom-and-gloom.

> I concede to greater minds than mine, but those minds are estimating something in the range of a 2-3% impact in the long term, nothing drastic. I'm unclear about the reasoning behind the doom-and-gloom.

To be fair, a 2-3% impact is huge in the scheme of things. Especially in the current slow-growth environment. As a comparison, in the US February 2008 to February 2010 there was a 5.1% GDP contraction and that event will be in history books for centuries.

There's a greater than zero chance that EU residents will lose the right to legally reside in the UK.

The new PM has threatened it, and when she was called out her response was "What you want to let criminals stay in the country?!". So yeah…

Yeah, but she's just posing and is not credible in this respect. It's a bit like hitting the nuclear self-destruct button or something. Germany and France are making it quite clear that access to the common market includes reasonably free movement of people, compliance with EU law, paying into the pot, and sorting out the situation of UK residents in the EU (also a problem) and EU residents in the UK. Methinks the chance that EU residents will lose the right to legally reside in the UK is close to nil - at the very least those that are there already.

What will more likely happen is that the UK will get a deal a bit like Norway or Switzerland where they basically apply EU laws and without having a say on what they are, and business as usual will resume in the name of keeping the City intact - with UK voters more disgruntled than ever.

> Germany and France are making it quite clear that access to the common market includes reasonably free movement of people, compliance with EU law, paying into the pot, and sorting out the situation of UK residents in the EU (also a problem) and EU residents in the UK.

That's all well and good, but all of those things are what people were voting to get rid of with a Brexit vote. It will be a tough sell.

Indeed, but that's what awaits them. Hell will freeze before the UK gets the EU perks without the costs, if only because the EU leaders are adamantly determined to set an example to flush any "let's leave the EU" incentives in other countries. For better or worse the UK will serve as an example that other nationalists will turn to and say "hell no we don't want this after all". The deal the UK will get will not be something to be looking forward to.

I for one am fully in support of putting them in the same position as Norway, and that's probably more than EU politicians will be happy to accept. That is: UK pays EU fees without the discounts they've negotiated for years on end, complies with EU laws, and gets free market access in exchange for freedom of movement. And without voting rights. There has been no shortage of walking on eggs since the UK has been around in the EU. And the voters were still unhappy, so if anything, good riddance. Then again EU leaders aren't very open to this idea insofar as I understood, because it's a great deal.

Another scenario would be to give them the same deal as Canada: apply EU laws just like Norway, and pay into the EU, without any vote. Oh wait! Yeah, voters will not be happy. But hey, they're the ones accepting that their politicians lie to them.

Yet another scenario is that the UK does not leave the EU. It might happen, after all. Will that be democratic? No. But it will be "constitutional", if one can use that word for a country that has none. Yet it certainly might be the lesser of all evils.

Truth is we don't know, and "tough sell" is not part of the equation. The UK is not in much of a position to negotiate. Especially with the quack they put at the top of their Foreign Office - who somehow managed to insult just about every foreign nation out there before even getting his new job. Credit to the new PM in this respect: she's making the chap own it.

currently the most likely scenario is that UK will prolong the uncertainty as long as it benefits them, ideally until the market stabilises.

> It's a bit like hitting the nuclear self-destruct button or something.

The words you picked show in a despairingly ironic way that she's not afraid to push the button https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jul/18/theresa-may-...

This is the most right-wing government we've had for a long time.

Dunno about the most right-wing bit, but this much I can suggest: if you're a nuclear power and openly boast that you'd hesitate to use it if needed your nuclear deterrance policy goes down the drain. And that basically is what she said insofar as I could tell.

Also: what kind of funky debate thing is there in the UK that brings MPs to say "she" before the person they're speaking to? Do they do the same when it's a "he" or do they then use "you" to actually acknowledge that the person they're speaking to is actually present in the room? (I'm genuinely asking; this is not merely rethorical... Though admittedly, I can't imagine Thatcher accepting this type of being ignored as a doormat if it's reserved for women.)

> Also: what kind of funky debate thing is there in the UK that brings MPs to say "she" before the person they're speaking to?

The person they are speaking to is the Speaker of the House of Commons. The questions are to be answered by a third person, the Prime Minister.

You will note that May also follows the same rules, referring to the people to whom she is (apparently) responding in the third person. (Because, in theory, she is actually, again, responding to the Speaker as to what she would say to the questioner.)

> Do they do the same when it's a "he" or do they then use "you" to actually acknowledge that the person they're speaking to is actually present in the room?

Absolutely. Indeed, were they not to do so, they would be called out for violating the rules of the House.

Incidentally, this isn't actually a funky debate thing that is specific to the UK; if you watch the US Congress you will note that members also refer to each other (except the presiding officer) in the third person even when making what appear to be direct requests like "Will the gentleman yield for a question?" This is because members are generally prohibited from directly addressing each other, they formally address the presiding officer.

How wonderfully British. Thank you for clarifying this. (And come to think of it, maybe "members are generally prohibited from directly addressing each other" ought to get implemented in some other countries if that keeps debates - reasonably - polite and without fist fights.)

In the commons MPs talk to the Speaker, not to each other. It's a bit weird.

It's like when you're at a party and suddenly some coked-up lunatic smashes a glass. You tend not to stick around to see their next trick.

Any sane person with the means to do so will be lining up their exit strategy.

I don't really see that as a reasonable problem. There are many nations that are not in the EU that have citizens in the EU/UK. I know for a fact that some South African people move to the UK despite from my understanding most South African countries are not in the EU.

The same goes for many of my US friends who have moved to the UK in the past.

People move, and it isn't really hard to get into the UK from a non-EU country. Just by applying the same practices to the EU that are applied to the US will solve any problems.

The UK work visa, from the US perspective that I have, is extremely easy to get. In the US, getting a work visa is at some times an extremely daunting task even with H1B (since in my opinion you are basically 'owned' by the company).

The UK seems much more lax. You get a visa for ~1000 pounds, you stay for the 3 years, you apply to extend your visa, then you can apply for citizenship [0]. I don't see much wrong with that.

[0] - https://www.gov.uk/tier-1-entrepreneur

Most people are not tier-1 entrepreneurs. That's the equivalent of 'alien of extraordinary ability' in the US. For the rest of us, the hoops are total pain in the ass. Even with 50k pounds set aside for me waiting to be paid out, and a PhD in chemistry, they wouldn't let me in (I took a job in the US instead). Moreover, the immigrations system is outsourced to a single web entity that takes a commission for every application, so there is a significant incentive for the web company to obfuscate the process and double- or triple- dip into their take from a single applicant.

Yeah, it was great. Now, the mood is such that everyone just stoicly carries on, and nobody knows for sure what will happen, but it probably won't be as good as it was.

I saw the response that they wouldn't be a guarantee that foreign citizens currently living in the UK could stay there.

Though I was happy that the reason was that EU countries would have to guarantee the same for British citizens living in other EU countries. It actually seemed fairly sensible when that reason was given.

Using humans and their lives as bargaining chips doesn't seem terribly sensible to me.

Consider Berlin, besides being very cheap, it is a great place for startups. It also happens to be easy as everyone speaks English.

Might be 'cheap' compared to London but Berlin has seen considerable year-on-year price increase every year for the past 5-10 years.

Real estate here has probably never seen such high & sustained price increases in modern (post WW2) history- in many desirable neighborhoods prices have increased by 10%+ YoY every year for a decade, which was previously unheard of (Germany has traditionally had a very stable real estate).

That's a phenomenon that happens in every big city in Western Europe unfortunately. At least the cost of living besides rent is still cheap in Berlin, unlike cities in northern Europe.

It is happening in almost every major US city as well. Boston, SF, NYC, DC, even downtown Orlando. Millennials are trading in the suburbs for cities.

Care to recommend somewhere better? I'm a US based person, but travel to Berlin fairly often and have interacted with several tech friends there in the local scene. It is a surprisingly vibrant and friendly community. Coworking also seems to be a really big thing there.

So, price aside, it is still cheaper than any major US city (especially with the current USD <--> EUR exchange rate), London, and anything else I personally am aware of.

I would still recommend it, just not expect it to be crazy cheap like it once was.

The big eastern eu cities should generally still be cheaper and some of them are pretty nice (e.g. Prague). I hear east Asia is much cheaper still.

Can you do government interactions in english as well (think HMRC, tax etc)? The other guy in the company is german so it's not a huge blocker but I don't speak german myself and it would be nice to understand official documents

Government interactions in English are functionally impossible. I'm happy to help out with stuff like that (tax stuff, company formation stuff, work permits, citizenship, any other related bullshit) for anyone moving to Germany. I had someone help me like this when I moved here and I'm happy to pay it forward.

I lived in Germany for a year and had all sorts of dealings with banks, the government, and even got married, and I didn't find it much harder than it is in the states.

Everyone doesn't speak English in Berlin, but most business and tech conversations can be English. Government is a completely different story and there won't be an ounce of English in those interactions.

The Financial hub in Frankfurt will likely attract the more serious and large businesses in the banking industry.

As for myself, personally, I was already abroad when the ship sank so all I have to do is not return. Come to Sweden my fellow expatriots! lots of tech!

If you don't mind I have a few questions about working in tech in Sweden:

- How easy have you found finding tech jobs in Sweden, do you have any advice for good places to look? - How does the pay compare to other countries/cities you've worked in? - Do you speak Swedish at work/is it possible to get by without being fluent in Swedish?

> - How easy have you found finding tech jobs in Sweden, do you have any advice for good places to look?

There are a few good places just north of Malmo, in Lund (which is an exceptionally nice place to live), but there are also good places for IT in Lulea (where google and facebook operate), and Gothenburg. It's very spread out.

The only one I don't recommend it stockholm, the wages are higher but you pay more outgoing in rent by a wide margin, and "first hand" apartments are basically impossible to get there.

> - How does the pay compare to other countries/cities you've worked in?

I used to live/work in Helsinki and London, now I work in Malmo. I'm working in a sector with historically low wages and I earn about 30% less than I did in London. But that is almost perfectly in line with cost of living. Other sectors pay much better. I would be better off here than London if I chose something other than video games as an industry.

Helsinki was very comparable to London in terms of salary/cost of living.

> - Do you speak Swedish at work/is it possible to get by without being fluent in Swedish?

I don't speak Swedish at all, the only issue is my banking which is all done in Swedish.

The most important question: how do I find an apartment to rent in Stockholm city center without Swedish connections and without spending more than 1/3 net pay?

It's the same all over. In what capital city of a major democracy are there jobs and affordable apartments?

I initially meant that rhetorically, but now I'm actually interested to know. Maybe there are good non-govt jobs and low prices in smaller capital cities like Ottawa (<0.8M) and Canberra (<0.4M)? Educate me!

Easy answer: you don't.

Stockholm is the worst place to go in Sweden in terms of cost of living, and yes, it's impossible to get an apartment there.

Luckily the tech scene is very spread out, Lulea, Gothenburg and Lund all have a variety of tech.

I'm very active in Frankfurt and the attention we've been getting for the past few weeks is insane. Frankfurt as a FinTech Hub is already being shouted from the rooftops here, but with Brexit it seems that Investors start to actually believe that in droves. Crazy Times for me.

I heard a news report about Frankfurt being smaller than Charlotte, North Carolina, so it can't possibly absorb all of London's financial companies anytime soon. It was certainly a lesson in geography, as I'd always thought of Frankfurt as a larger city.

You are absolutely right, peoples perception of Frankfurt is mostly wrong. But the size of Frankfurt largely contributes to the quality of life here. You can very easily traverse the city by bike, the public transportation is fast and quick, and the big banks attract lots of capital. By day Frankfurt grows to about 1.5 Million people who just come to the city to work here, so it feels much bigger while still having everything happen on a rather small scale.

The biggest downside would probably be that Frankfurt is at the top of nothing. We have very good theatres, very good restaurants, nice outdoor activities, but compared to other cities, you don't come here for any specific thing, you come here for the sum of things that make it a very attractive city to live in. The airport is reachable very fast from the city center, i was able to traverse between a Frankfurt Office and a London Office in about 1:20 door to door, so its geographical location makes it also very attractive when visiting or working somewhere else on the continent. As local novelties DECIX is located here and many large Data Centers have popped up all over the area, so if you are interested in Infrastructure there's a lot of jobs and know how in the city.

Frankfurt is very much embedded in its surroundings, with many smaller interconnected towns and several mid-sized cities within reach. [1] This gives access to up to 5.5 million people, 2.2 million in Frankfurt's close vicinity. Many of those happily change city for work, especially since the distances are quite short. Traffic is usually a worse problem for travel time than distance.

You also have the somewhat unfair situation of smaller towns right next to Frankfurt offering lower corporate taxes (part of which is levied by the cities) while taking advantage of Frankfurt's infrastructure (which is also paid with the corporate taxes paid in Frankfurt). This attracts a lot of businesses, of course, and on paper detracts from Frankfurt's size when all that separates them is one Autobahn.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankfurt_Rhine-Main

Londons financial area is basically City ("the square mile") and Docklands - two tiny little parts of town, so if you're going to go by size it's meaningless to compare all of London.

I'm going to go ahead and throw in Granada, Spain as a lovely place for tech startups. Good university, livable college town, cheap cost of living, and not a lot of competition for talent.

Are you from/living in granada by any chance? I just moved to Granada and would love to know more about the local tech/entrepreneurial scene.

I'm from Granada, but I moved to California 15 years ago. I keep in touch with friends, some of them have their own company (http://www.celtiberian.es/). Ask away if you have any questions. :)

What are rents like for a flat in Granada?

fwiw I'm paying 650 euros per month for a two stories, three bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, community pool/paddle courts + garage. There are tons of cheaper things though; a friend mentioned someone's renting a cave (yes, a cave) for 150 euros in [Sacromonte][0]. Caves are supposed to be pretty nice and special places from what I've heard.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacromonte

The surveillance state is a legitimate fear, but people are seriously overblowing the business threat of Brexit. Trade still exists. It won't be any more difficult to trade with the EU than it currently is to trade with the US.

If anything, there are probably some very real long term benefits that can come from this. Smaller governments (Geographic and demographic small, not %-of-GDP small) have some serious benefits in terms of their ability to adapt to the world around them.

For example, a floating currency means that your currency can adapt to your conditions, and not your conditions weighted by your economic impact relative to your peers. A floating currency would have benefited both Greece and Germany during their last economic conundrum.

Another benefit is that it is much harder to hide corruption as well as nominally-legal forms of corruption like pork-barrel spending. Special interest groups become much more limited in scope. Democracy is more accountable because it is smaller and can command more attention.

Think of any reform attempt like you think of refactoring code. Which program can handle simple refactorings better? The 20k LOC program, or the 2m LOC program? I would be willing to bet that most 2m LOC java programs are still stuck on java6, java7 if they're lucky. If the US were more federated than it currently is, we probably would have switched to the metric system sooner. We probably would have overhauled health care sooner (we might have had 50 different types of health care systems, but we would have reformed them in the 80's instead of 2010 and we would have a very clear picture of which reforms worked well and which ones didn't). It will always be easier to get 50m people on board with an idea than it will be to get 500m people on board. In fact, it might even be easier to reform the ridiculous surveillance state that the UK has going.

Brexit might have been led by despicable (IMO) rationales, but from a business/economic perspective the negatives are overblown and nobody is talking about the benefits.

Didn't the UK already have the benefit of a floating currency since they use the pound instead of the euro?

They did, but there was a regularly debated possibility of adopting the Euro. Now that possibility doesn't exist.

Brexit doesn't have that many benefits to non-UK citizens like us though

non-UK EU citizens FTFY

Not moving, but it seems some companies are not planning to open offices there anymore, like Rancher,

- https://twitter.com/smw355/status/746204644947296257

This question has come up so often in last few weeks that we gathered some reading and tooling to help pragmatic post-Brexit decision making, here: https://teleport.org/brexit

This is a great resource, thank you!

No one knows what the new arrangement will be yet (including with existing EU migrants) so would you not be better off waiting until you know what is actually going to happen? Unless of course you already have good reason to want to leave.

I'm curious what Europeans think about that howtostayin.eu link? Someone sent it to me this morning. Reminds me of the old Perpetual Traveler and offshore schemes except this time for an unexpected goal haha.

Personally, I'm basing my startup on the brexit fallout depressing the value of the pound, making outsourcing development to the uk cheaper than ever :) to wit I have set up http://brexitlabs.com

In all seriousness, I don't have a company to move, but I am seriously considering moving. I have a family here so it isn't as simple as pack up and go, but I've emigrated before so....In the meantime, parody seems my best bet. :)

Come to Ireland, we'd love to have you! 100% English speaking, culture very similar to UK, but our cities are not franchise laden cookie cutters of one another. Dublin is expensive but Cork, Galway, Sligo, Donegal, pretty much anywhere else is affordable and easy to reach. The people are friendly, the food is good, and there's lots to do.

Can't agree more!

In Malta you also get to do everything in English and foreigners with companies have nice tax breaks.

The internet is terrible though. Everything else is pretty good.

For clarification, is anyone on this thread in the process or committed to moving their company out of the U.K.? Realize there is plenty to speculate about and there are many great alternatives, curious who is actually doing it.

What about Lisbon? Portugal is very, very cheap compared to London and Berlin.

I read the ghost article but they mentioned many times that the country "Must be outside the EU", which is like the Brexit impact is not enough ...

They were mostly complaining about the VAT MOSS, which is very annoying by itself

How about Amsterdam?

Yes I just moved to Amsterdam (after 4 years in SF, 10 years in Montreal, and growing up in Paris before that) and it all seems way better than expected so far.

Everyone speaks english, most services also offer communications in english (bank, etc.) so really I don't find myself stuck trying to translate Dutch all the time (until I learn it) and tech seems to grow a lot here. While working in the city, I can see a lot of local tech and SV tech (Uber, booking, Atlassian, etc.).

It's also super cheap overall, and most foreign skill workers get 30% of their salary tax free.

As to move your company, I quickly looked and it seems like the taxes for companies in Amsterdam is easy and nice. 20% on the first 200k, 25% for the rest. And apparently lots of things deducible.

> I don't find myself stuck trying to translate Dutch all the time

Dutch is close enough to English that you can eyeball it for a lot of things with just a little basic work: e.g. in the subways where "houd uw kaart op de lezer" (iirc) is "hold your card on the reader"

Further examples with just a bit more context: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOueN0sV2SY

How do you find the take-home part of salaries compared to the US? I'm considering moving, but from what I've seen, they're only about half. Still considering as I work remotely, but that may not be the case forever.

if you take the same base salary and apply the 30% ruling, it's roughly the same. You take a little more home in amsterdam.

Isn't the cost of rent fairly high though?

well, coming from SF, rent is about 60% cheaper. We are able to afford a 2beds 2baths apt well located for what seems reasonable.

It's like Germany, only everyone speaks English, not the < 40 :)

Doing the Brexit means wider economic freedom not narrower, isn't it? Then what's the main driver to move out UK after Brexit?

Yep, moving www.secfirst.org to Ireland in the next few weeks.

Many reasons:

-Brexit - London doesn't just seem like the place it once was years ago. The shine has gone from it.

-Surveillance - IP bill etc. We build open source technology for human rights defenders. We don't want to be based in a place where people might try to compromise Umbrella etc (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.secfirst.u...)

-Talent - most of our team is either Irish or in some way Eastern European. We want to be able to continue to attract and work with people like that.

-Eurozone - sterling is just a mess at the moment

-Business - Corporate tax in Ireland is low and there is a good small tech sector. Also small but decent grants via www.idaireland.com www.connectireland.com www.enterprise-ireland.com

-Personal - Dublin has been (who knows in the next few months) really on the way up for the past year or two. The atmosphere is amazing. It's gotten very cool and tolerant (Gay marriage referendum was very symbolic of that). Also we don't have a far right/left the way that the rest of Europe has. Irish people continue to be awesome to work with and mostly, great fun to be around.

If your thinking of Dublin and looking for more info, drop me a mail to the place in my intro...

There are inevitably going to be some negative things people will mention about Dublin, as this topic came up before on HN so i've reposted my response here:

----- Some of the negativity doesn't make sense. The piece about not living in the city centre and instead the suburb commuter towns is madness. Totally the opposite. The commuter towns to Dublin are boring as hell, housing estates with very little services. Inner City Dublin is rejuvenating very fast, and parts of it feel like a smaller, more intimate version of Shoreditch or Williamsberg (except with better pubs and bars!). You can basically walk across most of the city within 45 mins.

Transport is poor compared to European standards and the cost of living is quite high. But if you live close to the city in Dublin it's not bad and it's a great place to socialise and be within 45 minutes of nature. It's probably one of the few capital cities in world where it's not unusual to strike up a conversation with a random person beside you on a bus. Also it's a pretty easy place to do business. Our nature is humourously sarcastic and not liking authority which means we are pretty good problems solvers and management tends to be quite flat. The software is also small, so your only ever really a phonecall away from having a pint with whoever you need to speak to in the whole sector - from a graduate you met at a conference to a government Minister.

People also work to live not live to work (like the US) which makes a big difference. Also a big part of worklife is around interactions with colleagues - it's basically an assumption that most offices are full of at least a few characters who like to have the "craic" and banter. When working abroad I found I really missed those tiny interactions you have on a daily basis in Ireland - e.g someone telling you a story and making you laugh. Even in London you don't get that. It's not something you can pickup by getting an MBA but it makes such a big difference to the quality of life - compared to a stale work environment.

> It's gotten very cool and tolerant (Gay marriage referendum was very symbolic of that).

this is a bit of a stretch, the politics are still very much driven by religion (e.g. abortion requires a trip abroad, normally to the UK).

the UK parliament passed gay marriage before, and it didn't require a referendum (as it was uncontroversial amongst the electorate)

Agree on abortion. Ireland had to have a referendum as it was a constitutional issue. I'm not saying Ireland is Amsterdam, just a very different place to 20 years ago.

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