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Chapter 1: What is the Ozempic boom and its impact on Ireland?
This episode of the podcast is brought to you by Cantor Fitzgerald Ireland, proud sponsors of my own festival, the Doki Book Festival, which is on the 18th and 21st of June. Now, in Doki, you're going to expect four days of ideas, of literature, of politics, of economics, comedy, and culture.
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Canterford's Gerald Ireland Limited is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. Today's podcast is all about the economics of Ozempic or Mongero. It's going to be talking about Eli Lilly's results. Eli Lilly pays twice as much tax in Ireland as it does in America, which is an awful thing for us to admit. And we're going to talk about the economics of the drugs themselves.
plus the fragility of an economy which is over-dependent on one source of corporate finance and corporate taxation, which is a description of Ireland at the moment and our extraordinary over-dependence on American multinationals. That's all coming up in a couple of minutes. To understand the economy, you have to understand human nature.
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How are you doing there? It is time for the podcast. Today's podcast is all going to be about skinny people. It's not us. It's not us, but if you're very skinny and you're out there, this is all about you. It's all for you. No, it's going to be about the economics of Monjaro, Monjaro, Zempek, all that stuff, weight loss, drugs, but it's also going to be about...
impact of weight loss drugs on the bottom line of pharmaceutical companies and the tax they pay in Ireland vis-a-vis the tax they should pay in the United States, all against the background of President Donald Trump having yet another hissy fit about who is a good neighbour, who is a good ally.
It's kind of hard to take lectures on good corporate citizenship from a man who is bombing the shite out of a country, as we speak.
Indeed. Indeed. Who said he wouldn't either? But anyway.
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Chapter 2: How does Eli Lilly's tax contribution to Ireland compare to the US?
So the Supreme Court has just struck down one act, which is the Emergency Economic Powers Act, right? And the Emergency Economic Powers Act says the president can, at a time of emergency, do whatever they want commercially.
Yeah.
But what the Supreme Court says, but you have to define the emergency. And what they've looked at is there's no evidence that the United States is in an emergency.
Yes.
So what they've said is that legalistically it can't be. But there are many other acts. So there is a section 232, John, of the Trade Expansion Act, which governs pharmaceuticals, which may well... Oh, specifically? Yeah, which may well be... the legislation that Trump or the American administration uses to target the activities of the pharmaceutical industry.
The reason I'll tell you, Trump remarked when Neil Martin went to the White House last year, Trump remarked, said, all of a sudden, Ireland has our pharmaceutical companies. This beautiful island of 5 million people has got the entire US pharmaceutical industry in its grasp, right? So he is looking at that, and this...
podcast today is going to be all about triggering donald trump okay and specifically a Announcement last week by Eli Lilly, which is one of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the United States. When you look at the filings from 2025, so how much tax they paid, Eli Lilly extraordinarily paid $6.6 billion in taxes to the Irish government. And it paid how much to the American government?
I don't know. $3.2 billion.
Wow. Okay.
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Chapter 3: What are the economic implications of weight loss drugs like Monjaro?
rapidly reduces my drug intake, John, my booze intake, and my food intake. Yeah, your McDonald's intake. I'm sitting around here. I look like heroin chic, right? I look like a male version of... You should be in Vogue. Twiggy. Just call me Twiggy from now on, okay? Here I am, sucking in my Ned, right? Chomping Monjaro. I'm injecting myself with Monjaro. Right.
But the point is, because it's so bleeding successful, John, that last year, Eli Lilly reported $22 billion in revenue from Monjaro alone and $13 billion from Zee Pound. That constituted an extraordinary 56% of the revenues of the entire company. Wow. And where is the stuff made? Kinsale.
Kinsale. Right? Actually, which is a kind of a gastro town as well.
Ironically, so for non-Irish listeners, Kinsale is a gastro town full of high-end restaurants.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Great, it's lovely.
And there you have the epicenter. So what is happening is transfer pricing. So they manufacture the essential ingredients raw materials from Monjaro in Kinsale. They export that to America. That then gets manufactured into a product, and that product is sold to fat Americans, to overweight Americans.
So it's assembled, as it were. It's made in Ireland. The ingredients though, and then it's assembled in America.
So you can imagine fentanyl, right? Fentanyl, the raw material comes from China. It's assembled in Mexico and it's exported by drug gangs into the United States. Think Monjaro, the same idea, right?
The raw material. Without the shadow banking.
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Chapter 4: How does the American pharmaceutical industry view Ireland?
And in Ireland, what do you think of it? Gov.ie tells us 63% of Irish men are overweight. 63%. And 50... You heard the drum. The drum, John's drum. That was Marker's, by the way. Marker's drum, John's drum, right? Okay, John is the cozy pal of drummers, okay? That 50% of Irish women are overweight. One in eight people worldwide are obese. This is how huge the problem is, right?
And adolescent obesity rates have quadrupled since 1991.
And of course, what's adding to that as well is the sedentary lifestyle and less sport.
Less sport, all that sort of stuff. Some people are just getting fatter, but these drugs are miracle drugs because they're doing, for the first time ever, is they seem to be successful. I have great sympathy for loads of people I know and loads of people I know are out there who have been trying to lose weight, who can't lose weight. They diet all the time. They go in this regime and that regime.
They try to run. They try to walk. They're trying to get active. It's incredibly difficult for them to lose weight. So I have huge sympathy for them. I really understand anybody who goes on these drugs because... it basically psychologically, emotionally, physically, financially, you feel better because you are better.
In fact, I remember talking to a doctor who actually said you should put it in the water. No, he didn't. He said it's brilliant. He said that most of his... problems are weight related. High blood pressure, bad tickers, all that sort of stuff.
But also, you know, I mean, the whole diet industry as it was in the kind of 80s and 90s was an enormous industry. And that in itself, that kind of constant dieting and the yo-yo effect that people always had once they come off a diet, they put the weight back on, that has a huge stress on your body as well.
So these things, these drugs are really powerfully positive for society. That's the first thing. And the second thing is they are powerfully positive for the individuals who take them because psychologically and physically, this is achieving something that people couldn't achieve prior to this. There are purists who say, well, you shouldn't be overweight. You should be disciplined.
But, you know, as you've said, lifestyles, bad food, too many pints, all that sort of stuff.
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Chapter 5: What are the risks of Ireland's dependency on multinational corporations?
Like any of those protein pump blockers.
Yeah.
And when you actually stop them, your body then begins to... But it's amazing for Ireland.
So it's a bit like, you know, if you're on blood pressure tablets or statins. Any of those tablets.
Any of those tablets, right. So basically you... You're on it for life. Yeah, but what's fascinating in Ireland is if you look at what we make in Ireland, do you know the way we think we're a nice nation and we're decent or whatever? Do you know what we make? We make Monjaro.
Yeah. Yeah.
What is the world's biggest exporter of Viagra? Ireland. 100% of all Viagra is made in Ringaskiddy, down in Cork. Something's going on in the water. Botox, all made, all made in Allergan. Fake boobs. We are the cosmetic capital. The more the world behaves badly, the better we do. I mean, Ireland is the counter-cyclical financial indicator. for the global health industry.
Because we have invested enormously in people living badly, boozing too much, eating too much, all that sort of stuff. And we have a miracle cure. We've got Botox. We've got Viagra. We can fix that for you. Just so you know, foreign listeners, that there is absolutely no morality in Irish industrial policy, right? We have embraced the worst drugs in the world.
We have exported them throughout the world. And we make fortune from them. There is no reason to be anything other than slightly ashamed. what we do in this country.
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Chapter 6: How does the tax structure in Ireland affect corporate responsibility?
Of skinny people.
Yes, a rogue state. With hard eyes. No, that Ireland becomes the state that is most identified with corporate malfeasance.
Yes, okay.
It is not good for us. to have a large American multinational pay twice the amount of tax here than it does in America. This is not good for us on any metric. Because if we're trying to pretend or argue that we are not in some way a tax laundering country, It's a little bit like, it's all right robbing a little bit, but don't rob a lot.
You know, that people don't mind what they can't really feel or see. But if you're involving yourself in wholesale... Like double, double. Yeah, but it's not only double. It's double what you pay in America. We have 5 million people. Taxes should reflect populations as a general rule. They have 340 million people.
We know that their entire MAGA industrial strategy is identifying countries that they feel are playing the game unfairly.
Yeah.
And we are playing the game unfairly. Not only we're giving them two fingers and we're al fresco involved in tax manipulation.
Yeah.
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Chapter 7: What is the significance of corporate tax revenue in Ireland?
So to replace that, just imagine replacing that, right? So what you want is lots of small companies, which will eventually become big companies. But if you wanted to replace the amount of money that the Americans are giving us every year.
Which we're probably going to have to at some stage.
Yeah, it'll certainly diminish at a certain level. What would we have to be doing here to generate the same sort of tax to actually fill the hole in the government's balance sheet? So if you take a small Irish company, let's say making a profit of half a million a year, so that's quite healthy, right? Mm-hmm.
At the rate of corporation tax, which is 12.5%, that company would pay ā¬62,000 per year in corporation tax. Now, to replace the ā¬24 billion, paid by the multinationals, you would need 384,000 new Irish companies generating half a million per year. Half a million profit. Profit, not in revenue, to replace the Americans. 380,000 healthy companies. How many are we at the moment, roughly?
So there are 310,000 companies in the entire country. Right. Right? Okay. And less than 6% of those companies have profits of over half a million. So what we're talking about, Ireland is populated by a very small amount of very small companies living side by side with a very small amount of enormous American companies.
And if we were to end up like Denmark and be healthy, we would have to create, this is an extraordinary idea, 380,000 new companies to replace that.
So that will never happen. And I suppose a lot of the companies that are in existence at the moment are in some way doing business with the big companies anyway. So if the Eli Lilly's, for example, up and left... Yeah, you're right. We'll lose a lot of those companies anyway.
So what I'm saying is we are very, very fragile.
Mm-hmm.
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