There were staggering levels of corruption and mismanagement both in the Irish government and within the Irish financial industry.
Agreed. There was clearly very little banking regulation, and many private banks were let run wild, combine that with a massive property bubble (prices have falled nationwide by 50% since 2007), and a strong societal urge to get on the property market, and Ireland is in massive financial trouble.
And to give you an idea of how massive the property bubble group think was, here's a video of the Taoiseach (Prime Minister/leader of government) saying in July 2007 that people who talk down the economy are so stupid that they should commit suicide http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfjGSfuSQpA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008%E2%80%932011_Irish_financi...
http://www.amazon.com/Ship-Fools-Stupidity-Corruption-Celtic...
There were staggering levels of corruption and mismanagement both in the Irish government and within the Irish financial industry.
I don't think you can look at the corporate tax rate independently from all of the other utterly crazy things that were going on there.