How can a small country like Ireland have such a high amount of net exports?

The numbers are somewhat distorted but much of the success is because Ireland has easy access to the largest integrated market in the World and this has resulted in many Multi-Nationals establishing their European Headquarters and their EMEA manufacturing facilities in Ireland.

According to many the only reason why multi-nationals establish in Ireland is because of low corporation tax and that everything will go to hell in a basket when the EU forces Ireland to change their Corporation Tax policy.

Having been involved in establishing ‘greenfield’ and ‘brownfield’ operations on behalf of US and Japanese corporations in many different countries including Ireland I am much more optimistic than many commentators. However, I am disappointed by the lack of local Irish spinoffs.