The 1,900 layoffs are about 60% of Dell’s current 2,900 employment in Limerick. So 40% of staff will still be employed, and they account for a lot more than 40% of the wages and salaries (what’s going is mostly assembly stuff). So less of a disaster than it appears, unless you’re one of the 1,900 of course.

The norm in British government circles, which seems to have been long ago adopted by UK newspapers, but not the average person on the street, is to say “Eire”. I’d assume it was a battle of common usage against official usage that the newspapers didn’t feel like annoying their government sources over.

It’s an unfortunate pedanticism, but not one that’s unique to this blog.

Tim adds: fair do’s. I, as very much an Englishman who also has the right to Republic of Ireland citizenship through descent, find it a convenient method of distinguishing. Ireland is the island, Ulster is, umm, well, the six counties rather than the correct nine, Eire is the Republic. As with the Red Queen, words mean what I say they mean……:-)

Assume the computers there cost $750 each, and you get about 12 million computers a year. Assume that all the computers Dell sells in Europe are assembled there, and it seems a reasonable number. That’s about 2500 computers per employee, which clearly indicates that whatever goes on in Ireland is highly automated. This is to be expected, because all the labour intensive stuff is done in China and other places where labour is cheap. So for the numbers to make sense, what is done in Ireland is highly automated, not terribly value added, and only done in Ireland for tax reasons.

That’s what I would have thought anyway.

http://www.ucc.ie/en/iss21/issp/DocumentFile,56999,en.pdf

What is “5% of GDP” is company revenue (and 20% for the top 10), which is enormous, something like $2mn per worker for Dell or $7mn in the case of Microsoft.

I think this is that high due to things like tax mininimisation and transfer pricing which I don’t understand. Clearly it’s not the same as GDP, but on the other hand I’m not sure of the interaction as it might explain some of the discrepancy between GDP and GNP?

Incidentally, as I always say, I think if you are looking at a factory’s contribution to GDP it is not just profits, but wages too.

Tim adds: Found it. Press Association report. Have written to the journo concerned.

Update: from the journo, he got confused with GDP and exports. Which sounds about right, although I’d think Dell are also close to 5% of imports as well.

(the DDR wasn’t officially called East Germany. Did you ‘correct’, in the sense of ‘pedantically assert stupid things about’, people who referred to it thusly?)