The average salary (not including RSUs/Bonus) in Dublin's Silcon Docklands is north of €130k+, with sick pay, 23 days leave, and the sort of employee protections which would be an utter fantasy in the US (defined redundancy payments, mandated collective bargaining, governance processes around mass redundancy handling at state level).

This was hugely evident during the recent spate of tech layoffs - employers planning collective dismissals are obliged to hold a mandatory 30-day consultation with employee representatives and notify the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment beforehand. Issuing premature "done deal" announcements before meaningful consultation breaches Irish law.

Even at the micro level, non-collective or individual restructuring must still rely on objective selection criteria and fair procedures. Failing to do so exposes employers to Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) claims for unfair or constructive dismissal.

There's also very very strict regulations around work/life issues. A famous case this year in 2023 where a Customer Care Team Lead at the Dublin office of Israeli software company Wix was dismissed after posting comments on LinkedIn. In her posts, she described Israel as a "terrorist state" and referred to Zionism as "the root of violence" while expressing solidarity with the Palestinian people. In July 2024, the WRC ordered Wix to pay Carey €35,000 in compensation after Wix acknowledged that the dismissal was "procedurally unfair" under Irish employment law.

In short, we're not that poor and have significant societal safety-nets that make up the delta in direct wages.

> The average salary (not including RSUs/Bonus) in Dublin's Silcon Docklands is north of €130k

That's quite a bit short to buy an EUV machine.

But of course, the parent commenter was not talking about salaries, because ASMLs products are not B2C.

> employee protections which would be an utter fantasy in the US (defined redundancy payments, mandated collective bargaining, governance processes around mass redundancy handling at state level).

This can be compared to protectionist policies such as tariffs.

If employees are hard to fire, then companies hesitate to hire them.

If employees on-shore are protected, then un-protected employees overseas are more competitive, eventually gutting local industries.

Etc.

This came up in Australia recently where a liberal government proposed loosening some employee protection laws with the idea that it would encourage hiring.

It did. It worked.

Then the policy was swiftly reversed by a more left-wing party, and a lot of those newly employed people lost their jobs because they turned from an asset to a liability.

Protectionism is a double-edged sword.