[…] For an increasing number of critics, Ireland being home to Chinese firms links the country to the human rights abuse allegations levelled against some such companies. These include Chinese clothing firm Shein, which since May 2023 has had its European headquarters in Dublin.

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In May, Ireland’s Minister of State for Trade Promotion, Dara Calleary, welcomed a report celebrating how Huawei was contributing €800m ($889m; £668m) per year to the Irish economy. The firm has three research and development centres in Ireland.

This is the same Huawei whose telecoms network equipment the US has banned since 2022 due to concerns over national security. The UK has moved in the same direction, ordering phone networks to remove Huawei components. And mobile phone networks in many Western nations, including Ireland, no longer offer Huawei handsets.

Meanwhile, WuXi has, since 2018, invested more than €1bn in a facility in Dundalk, near the border with Northern Ireland.

Earlier this month the US House of Representatives passed a bill to restrict US firms’ ability to work with WuXi, again citing national security concerns. The bill now has to go to the US Senate.

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Prominent critics of Ireland rolling out a “green carpet” to Chinse firms include Barry Andrews, one of Ireland’s members of the European Parliament. “Human rights and environmental abuses should not be allowed in Irish shopping baskets,” says the Fianna Fáil MEP.

He points to a US Congress report from last year, which said there was “an extremely high risk that Temu’s supply chains are contaminated with forced labour”.

Temu had told the investigation that it had a “zero-tolerance policy” towards the practice.

“One person’s bargain is another’s back-breaking work for poverty wages,” adds Mr Andrews, whose party is part of the current Irish government coalition.

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Some leading economists question whether Ireland even needs the few thousand jobs that the Chinese firms provide.

“Ireland’s economy has been running at near full employment for the best part of a decade," says Dan O’Brien, chief economist at Ireland’s Institute of International and European Affairs.

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Mr O’Brien says that Ireland’s level of FDI was already too high without the Chinese investment on top. “Given we are already overly dependent on FDI in a world that is at risk of deglobalisation, we don’t need another major source of FDI on top of that from the United States.”

He adds EU rules should be “actively used to discourage Chinese FDI” in Ireland.

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