As Ireland gets ready to engineer compromises between EU countries on tricky tech files in the latter half of this year, the very loud, trumpeting elephant in the room will be the country’s close relationship with U.S. tech giants. Sixteen of the world's top 20 tech companies operate hubs in Ireland and more than 100,000 people are employed in the tech sector. Ireland's fiscal watchdog warned earlier this year that just two tech firms — not named but understood to be Apple and Microsoft — paid