Meta chief executive paid roughly €20m for gothic-style mansion built in 1830 and its surroundings
It stretches the definition of pied-à-terre but Mark Zuckerberg now has a pad in Ireland: Strancally castle.
The Meta chief executive and his wife, Priscilla Chan, have bought the gothic-style mansion and its 178-hectare (440-acre) estate in county Waterford to use as a base during visits to Ireland.
“Mark and his family are excited to continue caring for this historic home and look forward to spending time in Ireland, where Meta maintains its international headquarters,” a spokesperson said on Thursday.
The price paid in the off-market deal is not known but the Irish Times, which first reported the sale, estimated a value between €20m (£17m) and €30m: approximately 10% of the cost of his 387ft superyacht.
I really wish Ireland would stop hosting Zuckerberg’s scammy ad company and all the other useless parasite corporations that hole up there.
Then Ireland fucking dies.
People really do not understand without Irrland being a tax heaven, there is no money in that country.
There’s handful of decent jobs in Ireland because of it, other than that, people have no future and are forever riding on benefits. I know enough people who basically haven’t held a job in 25 years. While the state shouldn’t let people starve, they did get complicit and simply gave up.
I’m sure I’ll get downvoted into oblivion for saying it here, lemmy loves to think everyone gets to just do nothing and get money for existing… but reality is, Ireland is fucked. Has been fucked for 20 years. They spiralled into one of the most expensive places to live with no prospects, people can’t afford to start new businesses so there’s less jobs going around. All the talent fucks off to UK (guess where I am?) Because we as a couple + an extra person couldn’t find a place to rent after 3 months of searching. People drop year’s worth of rent day 1 to secure a place (it doesn’t sound like this has changed much) so we moved.
I miss home, but I’d seriously have to downgrade our lives to move back. I couldn’t even dream to be able to do single income and maintain family of 3 in Ireland, even in my high paying field.
That is an exaggeration. While I can’t comment on housing the economy is built on being a tax haven but isn’t just that. There is a lot of employment in IT and Biotech and there are a lot of facilities actually based in Ireland, not just some office jobs for handling the tax evasion (that too of course).
The problem to me doesn’t seem that long term unemployed aren’t left to starve and die but a wrong housing policy and not even a joke of urban planning. It is what is happening when exploding real estate value is considerey a boon rather than a huge issue.
Those IT jobs are being culled now. There were news of Rapid7 closing down their Dublin office few weeks ago.
Intel has still decent presence, but without investment into infrastructure, where does that leave us? Not everyone can (nor should) work in IT or biotech.
How do you compete with mainland Europe when you got to ship things likely through UK and then to mainland while having one of the highest tax rates and wages in EU? Ireland hasn’t got any benefits in manufacturing. There’s only so much Irish beef and salmon you can sell to fuel the economy.
As far as I know logistic lines have adapted post Brexit and are avoiding the UK nowaday, stuff doesn’t have to leave the Single Market on the way to other parts of it. Ireland may be on the edge of the continent bit I wouldn’t call it remote. It is as close to the “Blue Banana” as Central Europe for example.
Correct me if I am wrong but the IT cuts are not limited to Ireland but happening globally in the sector, partially due to over expansion during covid and thecurrent AI bubble.
Yeah, I absolutely understand that there are real reasons to why Ireland has become a tax haven, and thanks for adding some background here. Of course what I’m saying is that I wish Ireland would find a way to prosper without them, not that it should just kick them out and then roll over and die.
I touched on this more in my other comment, Ireland has too many disadvantages to prosper. Mainland Europe has cheaper labour, doesn’t got to cross the Irish sea then the English channel to get goods in and with tax rates this high? Not much left on the table.
I do feel like there’s no “out” in this.
Why is housing expensive while job opportunities are low? Is it only true for cities like Dublin or generally true?
It became the whole, you can still commute to Dublin, so prices krept outwards.
The number of houses was very low, 2008 killed a lot of these housing plans and they never really restarted. Houses kept going up and up due to lack of supply. 3 generations living under the same roof is common.
But even places like Cork or Limerick have seen a big raise in price. Remote work or even hybrid allowed people to go further and prices obviously followed…