Rethinking: Ireland with Dearbhla Gavin Collaborative Studios

It’s often said that banks are the lifeblood of an economy. In simple terms, they're a place to deposit and save your money, creating a pile for them to lend out to borrowers, who put this money back into the economy in some way – buying products, investing in education, or a house. One person’s spending is another person’s income, as they say.
In the post war era of the 1930s, it was agreed that deregulation of financial markets would open up the world, Irish banks could borrow without any limit and lend to whoever wanted it, money would flow, everyone would win.
As it turned out, everyone else would lose out too. This free flowing behaviour resulted in a global financial crisis in 2008. (Because a banking system is so important to a country,) the Irish Government guaranteed the main Irish banks and tied us into a bailout programme with Europe, leaving Irish taxpayers to foot the €48 billion euro bill.
And the Irish people haven’t forgotten this. Which is why half the banks' work in this country is lending, the other half is defending themselves from the criticism from citizens paying for their mistakes.
There’s new kids on the block to worry about now too. We aren’t living in a world of AIB and Bank of Ireland in this country any more) - The challenger banks have arrived. Over 1 million of our residents manage their money online only, the most popular platform being Revolut. 
We are at a place where owning our own home is no longer affordable or even an ambition for a lot of young people, so the dependence on building a credit rating with a pillar bank isn’t what it used to be.
Starting and building a business is still a dream for many but we're also living through the globalisation of finance - venture capitalists based in Singapore are putting money into Cork based start-ups, yoga studios are being built via crowdfunding, US pension funds are constructing hotels in Dublin – dressing up for a meeting with the bank manager and asking parents for an IOU isn't the only option anymore.  
Free flow of money is still alive, there’s just more rules.        
Brian Hayes was a TD and on the side of his constituents when Government guaranteed the banks, now he’s crossed over as a spokesperson for the industry.
A great amount of politicians are problem solvers, they choose that path to get things done.
Politics is a relentless flow of problems and matters to attend to. One could say defending the banking system to the Irish people is as big a job.
However, in Brian's own words, it's an industry worth fighting for.

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We go all the way back to the 1960s as a starting point to understand the Ireland we live in today. Coordinated efforts on the part of Governments across Europe and America reduced trade tariffs – the price of importing and exporting and so brought us into the global marketplace.
There’s been booms and busts, as is the natural economic cycle, in the years since but the foreign companies have stayed and grown to one thousand two hundred, across sectors, at the time of recording
Their presence has directly created jobs and tax receipts for Government, supported our small businesses and made the cities especially around Ireland feel multicultural, progressive, part of a bigger picture.
We have so many more people living and working here, so much more going on, but the Island hasn’t gotten any bigger.
This has created real problems. A lack of affordable housing in urban areas, a competition for school places, growing hospital waiting lists. We may have been the fastest growing economy in Europe in 2019 but our citizens voted in protest at the path our country was on in the February election.
Dublin in particular has transformed over the last decade and it’s a point of contention whether the influx of hotels and apartment blocks is a good thing.
It’s a theme we’ve alluded to over the course of this series…with the opening up of markets, free flow of information, connectivity to everyone and everything, we now live in what can seem like a world of opportunity.
Our dreams can come true if we work hard, make the sacrifices, keep our head down and ignore everything in life that won’t help us towards reaching the goal..whatever that is.
The goal for Ireland after the bruising recession of 2008 was prosperity and growth. It’s a goal that gets many of us out of bed and if we don’t jump out, a quick glance our social media feed will soon make us feel guilty we’re not out there taking on the world.
Andrea Horan is an Irish entrepreneur making her own rules for what personal and business success should look like.
She did the corporate thing, lived by sales targets and ad revenue and after a year of travelling, she came up with a business plan to create a company that wouldn’t make her rich, but would make her, everyone that worked for her and every customer, happy.                  
Andrea is turning what we all think business is supposed to be about, totally on its head.
She is shining a light on the economy of more, questioning why we want to be thinking world domination when we wake up in the morning when we can live perfectly content lives in our communities, in service to and supporting the people we know.
More broadly, profit is and will always be what keeps a business alive but maybe it’s time we rethink how that profit is arrived at…is accumulation of money and happy investors the goal or should our most valuable companies have the principle of purpose at heart and solving the problems of the world?
As a collective, it’s time we re-evaluated what success looks like, because looking at the statistics for happiness, health, inequality and environmental damage, it’s clear something or many things..aren’t working.
In Andrea’s own words, create the life you want to live and the world you want to live in. 
Tropical Popical - @tropicalpopical
No More Hotels - @nomorehotels 

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At its most basic level, venture capital is the act of investing in a 'venture', a business, in the hope of getting more 'capital', money, back than put into it. 
A VC firm can also invest its time, technical and managerial experience, in the expectation the product or service will grow to be a successful company.
These guys (and to a growing extent, women) essentially look at a business plan or very early stage product and bet on whether they have the next Google or Amazon in front of them.
Unlike a private equity firm, which generally buy 100% of a more mature company, venture capital firms normally hold 50% equity or less, which gives them less control and less return but also means less risk if the company fails. 

Because VC firms invest mainly in start ups or early stage companies, venture capital has become synonymus with the tech industry and in a post financial crisis, highly regulated lending world, where banks have reigned it in, it’s become a favourable alternative to taking out a business loan.
 
So why Ireland? Well, if you read out a list of the biggest tech companies in the world, most of them not only have an office here but a significant chunk of their workforce based here. 
The same with the pillar banks around the world, even more so after Brexit. 
All of this gives credibility to a city as a place to do business, aswell as a rich talent pool itching to leave the ivory towers and build something of their own after a certain point.
Then there is two crucial elements no enterprise board can take credit for - the fact we are geographically close to Europe and speak the business language of the world - English.
 
Just like any high potential company, alot of things have to come together to make a country a great place to operate.
 
It used to be the case that you had to get on a plane to America, specifically Silicon Valley if you wanted people to invest in your idea.
However, Europe and certainly Dublin is making a name for itself as a place you can meet an investor for coffee, with firms like Frontline VC, ACT Capital, Round Hill Capital and Venturewave Capital based in the city.
Sarah Kunst, founder of Cleo Capital and recently named one of VC's rising stars by Business Insider, is rewriting the traditions of the VC world, as a woman, of colour and with her sights set outside of Silicon Valley.
She talks me to me about the game changing moments of her early career, the business failures that led her to building her own company in one of the most competitive industries, how she believes the systemic problem of inequality and discrimination in finance and tech can be solved and lots more. 

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Food is Ireland's most important indigenous industry, with an annual turnover of 27.5 billion euro. It is an industry where the inputs, or raw materials, processes or how it all happens and outputs, the finished product are 100% made in Ireland. 
It creates jobs for people living in the country, these people then have the money to give to other businesses and as support for the industry grows, its credibility builds and Ireland's food and drink exports are able to command a premium price around the world, as well as encouraging tourists to visit, with the guarantee they''ll be well fed for the infamous tracks and trails around the island.
Richard Corrigan is one of Ireland's most respected chefs and is an ambassador for Irish food at home and abroad.
Growing up on a farm has written the menus wherever he is at the stove, whether that is in Virginia Park Lodge in Cavan or in Bentley's, in the heart of London's West End. 
Local and in season, the industry buzz words of the last decade, is all he has ever known and so he's well placed to keep growing his empire as this continues to become a way of life in the way we eat.
We talk about his career highs and lows, how the Covid19 pandemic will shake up and change his industry forever, his views on Michelin stars, the truth about operating a restaurant in Dublin and what he and his good friend and enemy Marco Pierre White talk about on the phone. 


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Ireland is a small, open economy which lies between two of the world’s biggest trading blocs, the United States and the EU. 
Small, in trading terms, means that it exports more than it has to import to serve the population. This is good, it means it has a trade surplus and sells more than it has to buy in. 
Open, in trading terms, means it has access to global markets, to buy at competitive prices and sell to a huge number of people. It also means that what happens in the world economy at large, matters at home. 
In Ireland today, as it battles Covid19, Government needs to borrow to support all the employees who can’t work at the moment and employers who can’t open for business but want to keep their otherwise viable companies alive.
 If it borrows without thinking too far ahead, there’s a risk we will all be paying for it for years to come and another decade of austerity awaits. It’s a fine balance. 
For Stephen Kinsella, Associate Professor of Economics at University of Limerick, these are the issues he spends his life examining and has been an advisor to Government as it makes economic decisions we will live with for the coming years. 

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Mary Lou Mc Donald is the president of Irish political party Sinn Fein. With its roots in the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in Northern Ireland, it has often been criticised as representing Ireland's violent past, rather than a progressive future that Irish politics has tried to promote, south of the border, since The Troubles.
For this reason, it has been somewhat of an outlier in the Irish political landscape, until the snap General Election in February 2020.
Sinn Fein won a historic number of votes, across the island and demographics. Most people in Ireland gave Sinn Fein number one on the ballot paper.
It was a victory even the party didn't expect, they didn't run enough candidates to be able to govern alone.
 Although not in power now, the result represents a significant realignment of Irish politics and Sinn Fein are most certainly not the outlier anymore. 

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