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Comment by pjc50 | Hacker News Reader

This is probably the first time someone has described the west coast of Ireland as "not cold enough".

(More seriously, the choice of Ireland will be for tax reasons)

Aye, I'd concur with that. Pretty unusual/interesting that they chose Athenry Co. Galway though - I guess specific location is pretty irrelevant in a tiny country like Ireland but I would have imagined that Cork would be the default choice, since the EMEIA HQ is there too. Good news for Athenry in any case!

Nah, Cork wouldn't be a good place for something like this, other than the fact that a good amount of submarine cable lands there. But then by that, Wexford would be even better.

The big reason for putting stuff on the west coast is wind and cooling.

Doesn't hurt that Athenry is close enough to Galway City, and that makes it a great place to live. Frankly, if I was a network engineer, I'd totally be down for moving to Galway.

Galway is a great spot alright, although I have to admit I do prefer living in Cork ;)

I don't know anything substantial about data centres so I wasn't basing my assumptions on their real-world requirements.

That said however, isn't Athenry a bit inland itself? You'd imagine far west Galway would be better again, with the added potential - I assume - to create infrastructure their own offshore wind energy.

'tax reasons' are actually why I find this most surprising. The "Double Irish" tax arrangement is being phased out, which has led some to worry that companies that are only here to take advantage of it, may move on.

Seeing the complete opposite happening is very reassuring (as a local).

The double irish is under pressure but core Corp Tax is still 12.5%. Much lower than anywhere else. so tax is a good reason to do this in Ireland.

In addition, Irish gov are talking about new R&D scheme which will be like 6-7% corp tax on companies that focus on R&D. Alot of European companies have such schemes and Ireland can't be singled out for being "dodgy" with this. I suspect Apple will benefit from this.

Of course we (being Ireland) wouldn't get all this investment if Apple (and all the other US multinationals) was allowed to repatriate profits back to the US without paying the draconian US corp tax of 35%.

Companies like Oracle, Apple, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Cisco have huge amounts of cash sitting there in their balance sheets. They spend it in other countries (and/or issue new bonds) to avoid paying the stupid 35% US corp tax.

Once the Republicans and Democrats get their act together on this, Ireland will be screwed.

I'm sure the tax makes it competitive compared others in the same time zone like London, Amsterdam or Berlin, but to me it seems to be succeeding in creating a critical mass of tech skills around Dublin that can stick beyond the taxes. If it was purely down to tax, a lot of companies could have just moved shop to Gibraltar 4 years ago.

The "draconian" US corporate tax rate isn't so draconian when you consider the capital gains rate is way lower than most places, including Ireland.

> Once the Republicans and Democrats get their act together on this

So, seems unlikely then ;-)

I'm wondering if this is partially a play by Apple to sway Irish public opinion away from the notion of putting a stop to these manipulations of International tax law.

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