5 AUGUST 2000, Page 28

High-tech Pale

QUESTION: what is a high-tech Pole? An Irishman? You guessed it. Now I am pleased to have the point confirmed by Jim O'Leary, chief economist at Daly, Dublin's leading stockbroker. He says that the Greater Dublin Area is now a high-tech pole, or Pale. Its powerful gravitational pull, so he tells us, has drawn in companies like Intel, IBM and Cisco, and soon it will be to Europe what San Jose and Seattle are to the United States. This would mean that incomes in the Pale would be the highest in the European Union. At least this should mean the end of the annual cheque for £2 billion which Britain sends to Brussels, where it is turned round and redirected to Dublin.