Ireland’s economy may be rocky but it doesn’t need threats from EU

These are our neighbours who are being discussed, the people we mix with freely, some of them may even have family connections and I’m proud to say we are such a family.

We regularly cross the border by car and more recently by train which is, incidentally, free for the over 70’s. The money we save by not having to pay for travel we spend freely down there. We eat out, buy gifts and always buy some drink for our hosts.

The weather never seems as bad down there as it is up north and, of course, the scenery is to die for. I read a lot about Irish history but I fail miserably in one thing – I can only speak a few words of the Irish language. And all my efforts to work on this fail as I can never find anyone who speaks Irish in the north. Maybe this is a measure of how distant the two regions are, a distance driven by our

history and, yes, perhaps our inability to reach out that hand of friendship.

Our own economy in the north isn’t in great shape and there has been some envy of the Celtic Tiger image which has been heavily publicised about the south for years. But has that Celtic Tiger stopped roaring and if it has where does that leave us, a province tied to the United Kingdom which would appear to be falling apart at the seams? Are we to be left in the middle of two failing economies?

A headline in the Daily Telegraph caught my attention two weeks ago which declared that the Irish economy was `at risk from EU’s tech meddling’.

Now, tech matters bring a haze over my brain which was reared on reading, writing, English and having fun. I can do only the simplest of maths so technology is as foreign to me as the Chinese language. However I willed myself to read this new information which declared that `Dublin’s cosy relationship with Silicon Valley tech giants like Facebook owner Meta is now under threat’ and that `Brussels is pushing Ireland to take a tougher stance on tech giants, lobbying behind the scenes for wide-ranging investigations in how these companies handle data.’

Dublin isn’t happy and has accused the EU’s privacy watchdog of ‘overreach’, also accusing Brussels of seeking `to make Ireland poorer simply to appease other member states’. If things go pear shaped for Ireland it risks the jobs of 100,000 people working in technology companies.

Do we in the north want our nearest neighbours to be bullied like this? Some experts see this as a threat to Ireland’s economy. There’s a hint in the article that it could all end up before EU judges.

I have one suggestion. The Irish should borrow the haranguing skills of their very own Mary Lou MacDonald. Those EU bosses would quail at her threats.