ABSTRACT
The transition from the end of the twentieth century to the beginning of the twenty-first saw Ireland emerge from a peripheral, developing economy into the European poster child for the new globalisation. The strong socio-cultural links with the United States of America and membership of the European Union meant that, as the economy opened up through the 1990s, it was ideally placed to benefit from the surge in trans-Atlantic trade that followed the GATT Agreement (1994). This was further accelerated by developments in logistics and communications, notably the internet.
