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Ireland Corporate Financial Center Advantages 

The ‘offshore’ environment provided by the International Financial Services Centre (IFSC) in Dublin is attractive to multinationals looking to locate treasury management and other corporate financial functions in a fiscally-flexible but sophisticated environment, and many such operations have based themselves there.

Application for a certificate entitling a company to favourable tax treatment is made to the Industrial Development Agency (IDA) and the certificate is issued by the Minister of Finance.

Among the stated activities which the IFSC was set up to encourage and accommodate are a number of corporate functions, including the following:

• the provision of foreign currency services for non-residents;
• the carrying on of financial services for non-residents including global money management, dealing and trading in securities denominated in foreign currencies;
• the provision for non-residents of services of or facilities for processing, control, accountancy, communication, clearing, settlement or information storage in relation to financial activities; and
• the development or supply of software for use in the provision of services or facilities mentioned in the last item.

Since 2003, companies established in the IFSC are supervised by the Irish Financial Services Authority.

It is not necessary to establish a separate subsidiary in order to carry out corporate financial functions in the IFSC; there are agency companies and ‘shared service centres’ which provide certificated services to overseas client corporations for a number of the more usual corporate functions.