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Comment by bilekas | Hacker News Reader

Ireland has a lot of strange relationships with large tech companies, but I can say for sure, we have some great data protection laws.

Genuinely delighted that some people pay attention to these things and know what they're talking about.

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Laws maybe, though these are set at the EU level (and one might argue about the greatness of GDPR).

Still, the rest of the EU (or at least Germany) is quite unhappy with the enforcement of these laws in Ireland. It is absurd that the Irish Data Protection Commissioner is supposed to control the privacy of most larger tech corporations for the whole EU. A few years ago, they only had 22 employees and their only office was literally co-located with a supermarket in the suburbs [1]. They got a second office since then and apparently are now at around 100 employees [2], but that is still quite small if you have to control giants like Google, Facebook and more.

So, from the outside it looks like Ireland's "strange relationships" also include privacy matters.

[1] https://www.gutjahr.biz/2012/07/facebook-eu-datenschutz/ [2] https://www.dataprotection.ie/en/news-media/press-releases/d...

This stuff should be handled at a union level. Seems like low-hanging fruit to me.

As in: I don't think many EU citizens would object to having this being taken from the national level to the union level.

Create a single, strong EU data protection authority, placed somewhere in the union, after the typical competition. I'd suggest Sweden, but would also be happy with Denmark, Germany or the Netherlands.

No, but the Ireland government would surely object, because their cozy and soft relationship / taxes agreement with the tech giants is the only thing that's keeping them in Ireland.

I agree that the Irish government can be too cosy (and too slow on data protection) with big companies but the idea that that is the only thing keeping them in Ireland is ridiculous.

Companies like Apple, Microsoft, Intel, Pfizer and IBM have been in Ireland for decades. They may come for the tax but they stay for the people. It has a highly educated workforce that is very flexible and easy to manage/work with. I've lived and worked all over the world and Irish employees are the easiest and most fun to work with - even compared to the UK. It's pretty simple to get visas for companies. Accommodation can be a bit tricky to sort in Dublin but it's nowhere near as expensive or bad as San Fran etc. People generally don't mind moving to work here as the work/life balance is good and it's a super safe/friendly place for foreigners and families.

It has some industries with significant clusters (pharma, data, aircraft leasing, finance, tech, marketing) a stable political and social environment. It's civil service is generally efficient and isn't corrupt, it's easy to pick up the phone to them or a politician if you have a problem and need advice - even as a small business.

It's also the only native English speaking country in the EU now, cheap to jump on a plane to anywhere else on the continent or the US and has good internet connectivity.

For more examples: https://www.idaireland.com/invest-in-ireland

I call bullshit.

Ireland has filled this role because:

a) you speak Irish English (~English), which is easily understandable by most English speakers

b) Ireland has consistently offered insanely low tax rates to american companies wishing to establish themselves in Europe. (This is coming to an end.)

That is it.

I said that they came for the taxes already but stay for other reasons.

Yeah.. no.

You seem like you have a bee in your bonnet. Have you spent or worked much in Ireland? You seem to be an expert on both our use of our national second language and what working in the country is like. Or are you you just firing randomly on HN today because you aren't willing to engage with the other points that I made? (I agreed about companies coming to Ireland for tax but staying for other reasons remember)

> a) you speak something roughly approaching English

Whoa there, down with that sort of stuff now friend. That's not a nice thing to say.

I thought quite a bit about that line. I ended up editing it to "~English" in the end, perhaps ten minutes before you commented. Don't you think that's fair? Irish English, to me, seems like a distinct/unique language. Very similar to English, sure.

I mean.. I don't think americans are speaking English, typically, if that's any help. They're speaking American, which is a fork of English from some point in time.

The word you're looking for is "dialect".

Nah.

These people were just looking to downvote someone who were against their tax evasion cash cow. That's where their outrage comes from.

Any other outrage is a misdirection.

"They're speaking a sort of English" certainly sounds demeaning to me. The people in Ireland (and the US, and India, and Singapore) are speaking English -- different dialects of English. And FWIW, many of the divergences between American and British English, such as dropping the 'r' at the end of syllables, are actually changes on the British side after the colonies were formed.

Not agreeing with the parent commenter, but the differences are much less trivial than you’re making them out to be. I used to live with a Scottish guy, and he had to make a considerable effort to be understood at all in America. If we were out and he wanted to say something to me privately, he’d just say it in his normal Scottish English, and nobody else would have a clue what he said. “Singlish” is also very different. I’ve travelled with friends to Singapore who absolutely could not communicate with Singlish speakers.

Oh, no, don't get me wrong. I moved to the UK over a decade ago, and when I first moved here people couldn't understand me. And even after having been here for a year I still occasionally ran into people that I just couldn't understand at all. Even once you get over the accent, there's just an endless list of things that have different names.

But you have but to drop yourself in Iceland or Denmark or Germany or France to realize how close all of our languages really are.

(b) has largely already come to an end. And yet still they come (though if you buy something from Amazon these days the money probably goes via their Luxembourg subsidiary, not the Irish one like it used to...)

Not just that, but there's a good pool of tech talent due to relaxed immigration laws and being an attractive destination and an English speaking country (for the most part).

I don’t know much about the EU - why is the physical location of the office important?

a) the ability to recruit competent professionals depends a lot on the location (topical example: in Ireland you can easily hire a lot of competent phone support people speaking various European languages, translators and accountants familiar with tax planning).

b) every union member country wants that union money fed into their economy

c) prestige

Which office? Facebook's or the data protection agency's?

EU (more or less) has rules that the countries are primarily responsible for execution of the law and it makes sense that if a local shop causes privacy issues they should be handled by a local authority.

Now companies like Facebook play the system a bit. As first line of defense they claim that their European offices are just resellers of ads etc. and the actual operations are done by Corp U.S. (or Corp Bahamas or something) and for a second line of defense pick the country with the "best" enforcement and taxation track record. That can be done as in order for not each country trying to go after their local subsidiary the country with the European headquarters can go after that HQ for all larger cases.

Now the Irish government is smart - they see that 1% taxes on all of European business of Corp is better than 40% of only Irish business, thus they don't employ overly strict oversight.

Does it make sense for corporations like Facebook? Probably not. But for changing this this requires a unanimous change of EU law in the EU council and getting Irish to agree to that is tough, essentially meaning to pay them subsideries for their farmers or something to compensate.

Also, why to U.S. corps go there besides taxation? Language and common law. Essentially going to UK and Ireland is the easiest for U.S. lawyers to work with, as legal traditions and language are closer than on the continent ... and especially now after (formal) Brexit the choice is simpler ...

It seems like the other replies are missing the point of your question in the context it is asked. Every country within the EU has its own guidelines for enforcing the GDPR, and a regulator appointed to oversee privacy cases. So if you hold infringing data in a German AWS region, it is subject to the German regulator's authority. In a weird kind of statistical anomaly among all other EU countries except Luxembourg, Ireland's regulator has never issued any fines for GDPR violations, and seems to be twiddling their thumbs on incoming cases.

What the other commenter is proposing is a single regulator for the entire EU. Sure, that may be a solution, but it's not the law that was agreed upon.

San Marino would be the perfect place for European Data Protection Commission.

The Irish regulator has been more active than most, particularly in investigating multinationals. Overall, though, it's unfortunate that this is left up to national bodies; it should really be centralised.

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