Image provided by: Library of Congress, Washington, DC
ENDA KENNY HAS said it so many times, it’s got its very own ironic hashtag – #BSCITWIWTDB.
Yes, figure that one out.
The claim that Ireland is the Best Small Country in the World In Which To Do Business™ has become the current government’s go-to slogan for most questions.
But, it turns out, the phrase isn’t exactly new.
An advertisement taken out by the Irish-American Republican organisation, the Friends of Irish Freedom, in the New York Tribune in 1919 uses the selling point that “Ireland does more business than many other small nations”.
It also boasts a greater population and area size.
The ad was taken out with an aim to bolster funds to support Irish independence.
“Ireland is equipped for freedom,” the organisation wrote.
“She asks no favour, save that of a hearing from America, now that the hour for the Irish Republic has struck.”
It continues:
Ireland is large enough, populous enough and rich enough to run her own national business in a business way. The money that Ireland paid England last year could have run the governmental business of Bulgaria, Norway, Switzerland and Denmark combined – paying for all their administration charges, their police, ships and guns.
Ireland means to spend her own money, for her own people, in her own land, develoing her anthracite and bituminous coal, her enormous peat deposits, her marvelous possibilities in the linen and leather and many other industries, as well as in developing her great waterpowers and using her unrivalled harbours.
The group wanted to raise $2 million for the cause.
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