🇮🇪 Ireland

Ireland's flattering median age of 38.8 and 23.8% dependency ratio depend entirely on being a receiving state for EU labour (Polish, Lithuanian, Romanian workers) and international tech migrants — the demographic dividend is imported, not organic. Rising youth unemployment (12.6% → 15.6%) during record GDP growth is a glaring red flag: Ireland's 'young' workforce includes a generation of imported cognitive workers in tech and finance doing precisely the jobs AI is being optimised to replace. When the US HQs automate their Dublin back offices, the dependency-ratio 'advantage' collapses overnight.

Ireland's 'AI - Here for Good' strategy is essentially an FDI courtship document — data centre incentives, R&D tax credits, and positioning rhetoric, with no serious industrial strategy for the inevitable displacement of the same workforce currently employed by those FDI clients. Retraining infrastructure is patchy and the Department of Enterprise operates as a tech-sector talent agency, not a labour-transition planner. Housing crisis policies crowd out any meaningful debate about structural economic transformation.