Thirsty Industry: Investigating Foreign Direct Investment at the Water Frontier in Ireland

Critical Ecologies

This podcast with Rob Keogh examines the role the state has played in creating enabling environmental and material conditions for inward foreign direct investment (FDI) in Ireland from the 1950s onwards, by focusing on a particular case study. The initial investment, and subsequent expansion, of Pfizer in Cork Harbour in the 1970s is examined, with a focus on water resources and infrastructures. While Ireland’s success in attracting FDI is conventionally attributed to policies such as the low corporation tax and generous financial grants, as well as factors such as access to EU markets and an educated, English-speaking workforce (all of which are certainly important), environmental factors have generally been overlooked. This case study suggests, however, that water resources have been an important material condition for enabling FDI in Ireland. While the future is uncertain, the existence of an extractivist logic that values Ireland’s water resources as a “competitive advantage” in a world of climate crisis might lead to the further targeting of water-intensive industry as an opportunity for FDI in Ireland. Attention to the material conditions for FDI, and the state’s role in creating these conditions, raises important questions of environmental and social justice that should be central to any discussion of Ireland’s economic policy.