Ireland's economy is highly linked to how well the broader global economy is doing. When major US corporations look to expand during good times, Ireland often directly benefits. Ireland's domestic economy is comparatively tiny, but plenty of large industries like tech, pharma and some random ones like global aircraft leasing[1] have a large base in Ireland to support their European and sometimes global operations.

[1] https://www.irishtimes.com/business/transport-and-tourism/ai...

Again, there's nothing particularly 'preferential' about Ireland's tax rates. Other countries, such as the aforementioned France, had much more preferential effective ones. The difference is that our rate is more transparent because the effective rate isn't all that different from the headline rate.

So no, it wasn't.