Apple could take over Dublin location for first Irish Apple Store
Apple could potentially sign a lease for real estate on Dublin's O'Connell Street, establishing its first-ever outlet in the country of Ireland, a report indicated on Friday.
Natrium -- a consortium which bought the former Clerys department store at the location for ?29 million ($32.6 million) -- is trying to pitch Apple on the idea, Independent.ie said. Negotiations have allegedly been ongoing for several months.
Apple told The Irish Times that it has not announced a store for the site, but the company is often secretive about its retail plans until a store is already under construction.
The closure of Clerys in June was extremely controversial, firstly because the store was an iconic fixture of Dublin. Its loss put 460 people out of work, some of whom had been with the company for at least 40 years. Protests arose over the way terminations were handled.
Apple does have a store in Belfast in Northern Ireland, but none in the independent nation, despite it being a focal point of Apple's business. Facilities in and around Cork handle the company's European operations, iMac manufacturing, and international revenue, exploiting Irish loopholes to pay a minimum amount of taxes -- something currently the focus of a European Commission investigation. Plans for a datacenter are awaiting approval.
Natrium -- a consortium which bought the former Clerys department store at the location for ?29 million ($32.6 million) -- is trying to pitch Apple on the idea, Independent.ie said. Negotiations have allegedly been ongoing for several months.
Apple told The Irish Times that it has not announced a store for the site, but the company is often secretive about its retail plans until a store is already under construction.
The closure of Clerys in June was extremely controversial, firstly because the store was an iconic fixture of Dublin. Its loss put 460 people out of work, some of whom had been with the company for at least 40 years. Protests arose over the way terminations were handled.
Apple does have a store in Belfast in Northern Ireland, but none in the independent nation, despite it being a focal point of Apple's business. Facilities in and around Cork handle the company's European operations, iMac manufacturing, and international revenue, exploiting Irish loopholes to pay a minimum amount of taxes -- something currently the focus of a European Commission investigation. Plans for a datacenter are awaiting approval.
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However, the cynic in me says, "I'll believe it when I'm standing in the queue, ten minutes before opening, waiting for my new t-shirt".
Bring it on, Apple.
Half-truth-journalism gets more clicks, so. Not blaming AI, they are just reporting what's written.
Are you sure they've never commented? You think our economy is booming? Our national dept: €184,622,041,664 Where are you located? As my uncle said (he was head of business in an Irish university) 'Germany now own us and they never even had to go to war with us'.
You're right about Norway and New Zealand though, they're way behind.
Figures in 000s.
Interestingly, despite their numbers being the lowest, New Zealand's tourist industry earns the most revenue of the four. It's all in the UNWTO doc.
* Ireland went to war with Germany on 4 August 1914, as one of the constituent kingdoms of the United Kingdom. That war ended on 11 November 1918. As a matter of its own constitutional law, the Republic of Ireland fixes the date of its creation as (at the earliest) 21 January 1919, the date of the first Dáil, of the first Declaration of Independence by an Irish elected assembly, and of the outbreak of the Irish War of Independence (it was a busy day). As an aside: so far as British law is concerned, the Irish Free State was not created until 6 December 1922.
So whichever way you look at it, from the British or Irish perspective, or that of the law of armed conflict, Ireland and Germany did go to war. The names of over 49,400 dead Irishmen listed at the Irish National War Memorial Gardens in Islandbridge, Dublin attest to this. That's a big chunk of the 900,000 dead from the whole British Empire during the First World War. To put that number in perspective, Ireland's War of Independence against Britain from 21 January 1919 to 11 July 1921 claimed a total of around 2,000 dead, on both sides, including civilians. Or to put it another way, the United States lost 116,516 dead in the First World War: that's 2.5 times Ireland's number but with a population which at the time was 30 times as large.
Sorry for what must seem an off-topic rant, but the historical amnesia of my own countrymen demeans the sacrifice of those who gave their lives in a conflict many people there would rather forget. For an academic to crack a joke which relies on that was poor form.
Besides, this post is not completely off-topic: the building we are talking about dates from 1922, the era of the creation of the Irish state. It was rebuilt by Clery's in that year after having been completely destroyed in the 1916 Easter Rising.
But I don't buy Ireland's ( the poster not the country) arguments. It would definitely matter to many retail outlets that tourist numbers are high -- less so an expensive electronics store. Do many tourists but iPhones or macs on holiday? Apples prices are not cheap in Ireland. They might sell some accessories. The Genius Bar is a cost.
In any case, that wasn't really the point.