Many of the companies that have their corporate headquarters in Ireland employ very few people in the country. They just use the country as a tax shelter and then funnel their remaining profits through other tax shelters like Bermuda or the Cayman Islands (both British overseas territories, by the way). So the effect of the corporation tax rate on Irish employment is overstated.

One of the main reasons why companies that are serious about doing business and producing things have set up in Ireland is because there is a young, well-educated, English-speaking workforce who work hard and play hard. That's not going to change overnight if corporations are compelled to pay more tax.

One of the reasons why such a workforce exists in Ireland is that before the bankers and developers and their accomplices in the government bankrupted the country, the EU supported huge investment in Irish education. That won't happen again as long as the State is 85 billion euro in debt, unless the tax structure is reformed to ensure that those who have profited most from the boom pay their share.