Reflections from Ireland: Arizona’s Opportunity
by Dr. Lily McElwee, President & CEO, Phoenix Committee on Foreign Relations
Last month, PCFR joined the Arizona-Ireland Trade Commission and a group of industry and community leaders for a mission to Dublin designed to advance the cross-border partnership across several areas. Despite five years in England, this was my first time in Ireland. I came away from the country with quite distinct impressions of its society, national priorities, and sense of identity on the world stage – in ways that point to several areas for greater collaboration in years ahead.
Key Takeaways
Most noticeable for me was broad satisfaction among the Irish public with the state of the economy and direction of the country.
There is reason for this optimism. As one of our hosts put it bluntly, “we were poor and now we’re rich.” Anecdotally, that sentiment appeared broadly held, reinforced by conversations with everyone from government representatives to think tank experts to taxi drivers. It is also supported by the data. Today, Ireland’s GDP per capita is the second-highest within the EU. 2025 saw growth in real terms of 4.7%. Reflecting satisfaction with the current state of affairs, Irish support for the European Union is the strongest among its 27 member states: 86% view EU membership as a “good thing,” compared with 62% across the economic bloc.
Ireland’s economic momentum has been supported by a relatively stable political system that has avoided strong left-right cleavages seen elsewhere in Europe. Its two traditionally dominant parties, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, are both broadly centrist/center-right and have historically differed modestly on many core economic questions. Issues that have proved electoral hot rods in other Western democracies, such as immigration, are less prominent points of contention in Ireland. While Irish society is considerably more diverse than in past decades – more than one-quarter of employees in Ireland are non-Irish nationals, and non-Irish workers accounted for more than 60% of the growth in Ireland’s workforce between 2019 and 2024 – societal attitudes remain comparatively positive. Surveyed in 2024, over three-quarters of Irish respondents said immigrants contribute positively to Ireland, well above the EU27 average.
Yet Ireland’s recent success has brought challenges of its own. Housing shortages are a top domestic issue, especially since home ownership remains central to the Irish experience. Public infrastructure has struggled to keep pace with the country’s expansion, and traffic within Dublin was conspicuous throughout our trip. We learned that a new rail line connecting Dublin Airport to the city is under development. These issues haven’t weighed heavily on the attractiveness of Ireland as an investment site: 4/5 corporate headquarters of U.S. firms doing business in Ireland view the country positively as an investment and growth location. Nevertheless, as the American Chamber of Commerce in Ireland shared, they are headaches for foreign as well as domestic firms. Even at Intel, many employees commute from across the country in search of cost-competitive housing.
Dublin is taking note, in part because of a second key dynamic: economic diplomacy is a top foreign policy priority, backed by a remarkably concerted strategy. At the center of this effort is IDA Ireland, a government agency we met on the trip dedicated to attracting and retaining foreign investment. With roughly 400 staff globally and nearly €280 million in annual government funding, IDA operates at a scale that underscores how seriously Ireland takes FDI attraction. Ireland reinforces hands-on, company-specific assistance with a highly competitive investment environment, including a 12.5% corporate tax rate on most businesses, (15% on bigger multinationals to comply with EU regulations), a 35% tax credit on qualifying R&D expenditures, and an IDA Ireland grant program of roughly €100 million annually to support investment projects.
The United States is a major focus of Ireland’s investment attraction and trade promotion, supplemented by engagement at the state level. We were fortunate to meet with Senator Mark Daly, President of the Irish Senate, who is spearheading a push for trade commissions between Ireland and every U.S. state. When we arrived, there were 31 in place; when we left, that had ticked up to 32. These commissions create considerable scope for further collaboration at the subnational level.
The third observation is intimately related to the first two: while economic priorities dominate domestically and diplomatically, security investment remains comparatively limited. Ireland has fewer than 8,000 defense personnel across all three services, and its defense budget in 2025 was just over €1.3 billion. During Trump’s visit a few weeks ago, and minister visits throughout its Council of the EU presidency in recent months, Ireland has reportedly relied on assistance from France and the United Kingdom for air and maritime defense.
These neighbors would like to see Ireland invest more heavily in defense, particularly as hybrid threats proliferate. Ireland occupies an unusually consequential position in the world’s digital infrastructure: roughly three-quarters of subsea cables in the Northern Hemisphere pass through or near Irish waters, placing the country at a critical junction between North America and Europe. The vulnerability is not theoretical. Russian intelligence and “shadow fleet” vessels have repeatedly been observed in and around Irish waters, including near critical undersea infrastructure.
In some ways, the country’s security vulnerabilities are only growing with its economic momentum. Data centers consumed 23% of all metered electricity in Ireland in 2025, up from just 5% a decade earlier, while economic sectors heavily dependent on this infrastructure account for more than €100 billion in annual activity and 875,000 jobs. For an economy so dependent on technology and foreign investment, strengthening resilience against cyberattacks, sabotage, and other hybrid threats will increasingly be an economic imperative as much as a national-security one – as an important part of preserving the stability and predictability that have made Ireland so attractive to global capital. Even so, Ireland remains at the bottom of the EU defense-spending table. I learned in meetings that the history of Ireland’s neutrality is enormously complex, anti-militarism remains common, and few see imminent threats to the Irish homeland (rightly so).
Irish government or industry officials are not oblivious to a more complex geopolitical landscape, but these are newer conversations. As Ireland invests heavily in advanced research—from quantum technology to therapeutics—its Military Intelligence Service has stepped up scrutiny of Ireland-PRC research ties and briefed university leaders on the risks of engagement with Chinese institutions in sensitive dual-use fields. The Defense Ministry late last year announced a five-year plan to increase defense spending and address gaps in maritime and air security. This comes from a low base, and it will be interesting to watch how quickly hard-security investment evolves as geopolitics become more contested and Ireland’s exposure to hybrid threats grows.
The Opportunity: Advancing Arizona-Ireland Ties
This brings us back to the principal purpose of the trip: advancing Arizona-Ireland ties. Across our meetings, it became extraordinarily clear that there is a strong foundation on which to build. Ireland is the largest per-capita investor in the United States, while roughly three-quarters of FDI into Ireland ultimately originates in the United States. The opportunity for Arizona is to deepen this transatlantic relationship in areas where the two economies are particularly well-aligned. As we heard about Ireland’s strengths in technology supply chains, biopharma, and automation, we were reminded of many of Arizona’s own, pointing to a natural complementarity. Intel’s substantial presence in both places provides an existing bridge and a tangible example of how those shared strengths already intersect.
It struck me during the trip that the opportunity to deepen Arizona-Ireland ties extends well beyond trade. The strongest partnerships are multidimensional, with economic, academic, and policy relationships reinforcing one another. ASU has a partnership with Dublin City University while preparing to establish an even greater presence in Ireland in the years ahead. During my time in Dublin, I sat down with experts at the Institute of International and European Affairs, Ireland’s leading independent foreign policy think tank, to discuss joint programming. Building these connections in parallel creates a compounding effect, embedding the Arizona-Ireland relationship across institutions and making it deeper and more durable over time.
Looking back, I am immensely grateful to leadership at the Irish Cultural and Learning Foundation, the Arizona Legislature, the Arizona Commerce Authority, and partner organizations for a productive and educational trip to Ireland – one that allowed us to see subnational diplomacy in action and identify tangible pathways toward a deeper Arizona-Ireland partnership.
