September 5, 1998

Clinton Signs Pact on Electronic Commerce in Ireland

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

UBLIN, Ireland -- There has never been a better time to be Irish, President Clinton declared Friday, saluting the success of Ireland's fast-growing economy and blossoming partnerships with American investors.

"You have worked together to draw out the strengths of every element of this society and to minimize conflict," Clinton said, highlighting the economic peace dividend in a speech to business, labor and community leaders at the Royal College of Surgeons.

Turning to economic issues a day after an emotional tour of Northern Ireland, Clinton signed an agreement with Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern to minimize regulatory, customs and tax barriers on doing business electronically. Using Gateway Computers as a backdrop, he touted the high-tech industry as key to the prosperity of the once-poor Irish Republic.

"Ireland will have its day in the sun because the most important thing in the 21st century is the capacity of people to imagine, to innovate, to create, to exchange ideas and information," he said. "By those standards this is a very wealthy nation indeed."

The two leaders digitally signed the electronic business pact on a pair of laptop computers, a technological step which Clinton said left him yearning for his pen.

"Do you have any idea how much time I spend every day signing my name?" he said. "I'm going to feel utterly useless if I can't do that anymore."

Clinton noted that 470 U.S. companies have invested in Ireland, many of them devoted to information technology like Gateway and all of them "transforming the way the Irish interact and communicate with other countries."

"That is clear here -- perhaps clearer here than anywhere else -- at Gateway, a company speaking many languages and, most of all, the language of the future," he said. "Gateway and other companies, like Intel and Dell and Digital, are strengthening Ireland's historic links to the United States and reaching out beyond."

Gateway, of North Sioux City, S.D., has been selling all-in-one computer packages by mail order since 1985 and from Dublin since 1993. Most of the 1,600 employees in its expanding Dublin workforce cheered as the president arrived on the shop floor.

Clinton said that Irish software exports -- second only to the United States -- have been a key to creating a "Celtic tiger economy." Last year, the Irish economy grew by 7.7 percent and unemployment hit a 20-year low, the president noted.

"There has literally never been a better time, I don't suppose, to be Irish because of the economic success, because of the renaissance in writing, filmmaking, because of what so many people are doing in so many ways to advance the cause of peace," he said.