Politics

Analysis: Leo Varadkar won the hearts of big business but forgot Irish SMEs in the end

The departing Taoiseach took a hands-on approach to win investment from huge multinationals but his recent policies are damaging Irish SMEs

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar was a darling of multinationals but smaller, domestic businesses weren’t always as impressed with some of his policies. Picture: Conor McCabe

On the morning of Thursday, 2 November 2017, Leo Varadkar emerged from a meeting with Mark Zuckerberg, founder and chief executive of Facebook, at the company’s headquarters in Menlo Park in California.

The Taoiseach had good news – the US social media giant was planning to create hundreds of new jobs in Dublin as part of its ongoing global expansion. Varadkar’s meeting with Zuckerberg, which was part of a broader trade mission to Silicon Valley ...