Apartheid Israel, FDI And The Irish State - A Love Story

The Minister for Enterprise, Tourism and Employment, Peter Burke, is in love. He’s head over heels in love with Foreign Direct Investment. Of course he is; he wouldn’t have got within an ass’s roar of the job if he wasn’t absolutely devoted to maximising the profits of US corporations.

But love is blind. It blinds you to the ugliest of facts.

For example, in response to a Parliamentary Question about Teva Pharmaceuticals on 1st May 2025, Peter replied that the Israeli company was “a leading global pharmaceutical company, headquartered in Israel with operations in over 60 countries”.

Personally, the first thing I would have mentioned is that Teva is a prestige asset of the apartheid Israeli state that is currently carrying out a genocide in Palestine. Teva essentially “pharma washes” the unwashable stain of the ongoing, live streamed, mass murder of tens of thousands of men, women and children.

How deep is his love? Well, Peter’s answer to the Parliamentary Question on 1st May reads like the second place entry in a Young Fine Gael Valentine’s Day poetry competition:

“Expenditure within the economy by FDI companies increased by 6.5% to €38.6 billion during 2023 showcasing the resilience and adaptability of our economic framework”.

When your starting point is to focus on what these parasitic companies “give” us rather than the damage they do, you know we are dealing with a very dark kind of love. Peter and the army of posh accountants, solicitors and financial experts who maintain our tax dodging industry will do anything for love.

An intangible assets tax credit worth hundreds of billions. A research and Development tax credit. Loopholes to avoid tax. Facilitation of transfer pricing: a kind of “now you see it, now you don’t” sleight of hand, whereby corporations are allowed to sell commodities to themselves to hide profits? They do it all.

They will even put their hands over their ears to shut out the sound of the screams of children being burned alive in tents in Gaza. But will Peter and his ruling class mates make these corporations pay their fair share of tax by closing these criminal loopholes? No, they won’t do that.

The specific question put to Peter was “if he has made provision to protect the employment of 750 workers in a Teva Pharmaceuticals in the event of a withdrawal of the company from Ireland”.

He replied that the “IDA is engaged with site leaders of the company on an ongoing basis. (sic) and is not aware of any plans for the company to withdraw operations from Ireland.”

The Irish people overwhelmingly oppose our government’s support for Israel. If Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil do not want to accept this fact, that does not mean that the Israelis do not see it.

They see it clearly. They see too, that their zionist state is well on the way to becoming an international pariah. What it is doing in Palestine will never be forgotten, it will not be forgiven.

There will be a reckoning; just as there was with apartheid South Africa. Either the Occupied Territories Bill will be introduced or the Israelis will take a parting shot at Ireland and order the closure of the Teva operations in Waterford and Swords. The boycott campaign underway by brave and determined activists in Swords, Balbriggan and elsewhere will surely affect the bottom line.

What then for the workers, Peter? What then for well over €100 million of Teva drugs supplied to the HSE every year?

It is time to face up to reality. Peter may not want to accept it, but Teva could pull out tomorrow. He may tell himself that they’ll never leave, that they wouldn’t do that to us, would they?

Keep in mind that – as reported in the Sunday Business Post in 2018 - Benjamin Netanyahu personally phoned the directors of Teva to demand specifically that they fire Irish workers. He demanded the closure of the Irish operation. He would do it again in a heartbeat. Don’t doubt it for a minute.

Sorry, Peter, Teva just isn’t that into us.

As we pointed out in a previous article, the obvious solution here is for the plant to be taken into public ownership. The workers are the ones who produce the profits; not the Israeli shareholders. Irish patients are the ones who need the medicines.

European heads of state fall over themselves to cheerlead the confiscation of Russian financial assets. Nationalising this plant is an entirely more reasonable proposal. It is a small-scale operation, globally speaking, but an important one in Waterford. SIPTU has an involvement in Waterford and we have reached out to them to lobby for the nationalisation of the plant.

The workers of Teva need to take things into their own hands, though. You are working for a company that legitimises the genocidal Israeli state. That is not sustainable employment. Organise now. Push your union, SIPTU. Be prepared to show them how to take action. Occupy if your jobs are threatened and demand the state step in.

Speaking of “sustainability”: the end of the love affair is coming in a more fundamental sense for Peter Burke and his ilk. Even the Sunday Business Post, a mouthpiece of the supine Irish ruling class, published a well researched article on 4th May predicting the demise of the grotesque tax-dodging system:

“This isn’t a national economy in bloom. It’s a laundromat. Our prize is not lasting prosperity but fleeting tribute, conditional upon Ireland remaining a hospitable tax refuge for the barons of Big Tech and Big Pharma…we have tethered our fate to the caprice of foreign boardrooms”.

True love never dies. US and Israeli corporations are here only for the tax breaks. True love does not hurt. Tax evasion by US global corporations leads to the needless deaths of at least 8 million people a year.

We need to get Teva Pharmaceuticals out of this country. But, longer term, there is no “nice” capitalism. What we need is a rational, planned socialist economy. The only way we can get this is for working class people to join together, to organise, to rise and to fight for it. If you want true love, that’s how we get it.