The Irish government is unbelievably rich. It’s largely thanks to Uncle Sam.

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. DUBLIN : The Irish government is rolling in clover like never before. The country currently has so much money it pumps cash into not one but two sovereign-wealth funds.

It is so flush that the budget watchdog doesn’t warn about not having enough money but rather that the government is spending so much that it could overheat the economy. In Dublin, authorities are building what might become the world’s most expensive children’s hospital. There are plans for a motorway to link Cork and Limerick, new flood defenses in Shannon and floating wind farms off the south coast.

Outside the parliament sits a new bike shed that cost half a million dollars, houses 36 bikes and doesn’t keep out the rain. The state is spending $10 million to get children off their phones at school, including mass-buying magnetic pouches to lock the devices away so they don’t get distracted. “The good times are back," says Pat Woods, as he stretches his arms out over the red leather banquette of his pub the Dame Tavern in central Dublin.

“Everything is flying." Standing in a nearby street sucking on a vape, a local hairdresser marvels at what is unfolding. “The spending is wild," he says. Helping fund this largess is the U.S.

tax system and an unexpected side effect of a global clampdown on corporate tax dodging. The U.S. government and the European Union spent the past decade changing laws and pressuring big multinationals not to book profits in offshore jurisdictions, such as the Cayman Islands, where they have no operations and pay no corporate tax.

So now many U.S. companies are doing the next best thing: parking their international profits in low-tax Ireland where they employ some people and pay some tax. Among