The letters could not be warmer. There are references to notable achievements on both sides, talk of future plans and hopes expressed that they will meet again soon in the future.
The correspondence from Taoiseach Leo Varadkar to Apple chief executive Tim Cook, Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg and Google chief executive Sundar Pichai is what you might expect.
“Congratulations on your election!” Cook started his letter of June 16th, 2017, to Varadkar two days after he became Taoiseach.
The Apple boss picked up on a line from Varadkar’s victorious speech after winning the Fine Gael leadership, saying that he was “particularly struck by your recent comments that Ireland is a country where it matters not where you come from, but rather where you want to go”. He continued: “I agree: Apple was lucky enough to open a small facility in Cork in 1980. Today we employ 6,000 people across the country.”
Varadkar likes to repeat applause lines from his own speeches in his letters.
“Ireland’s future is an island at the centre of the world and at the heart of the common European home,” he writes in letters to Google’s Pichai and to Facebook’s Zuckerberg sent on the same day, November 16th, 2017 – two weeks after he met them on his trade mission to California.
Informal
Where the Fine Gael man writes on letterheaded “Office of the Taoiseach” paper, Zuckerberg unsurprisingly goes for the informal email. The world’s fifth richest man emails Varadkar about his excitement over the Cork research office of Facebook’s virtual reality division Oculus and the Clonee data centre in Co Meath starting operations.
“Facebook Ireland is an important part of our global community and we are looking forward to growing our presence in your country,” he writes.
Zuckerberg even thanked Varadkar for his Mother’s Day visit to Facebook’s Dublin headquarters the previous March and for praising the company’s policy of four-months’ paid paternity leave.
“We are proud of our parental leave programme and we appreciate the recognition,” wrote Zuckerberg of Leo’s visit that came two weeks after the Facebook man announced that he was to become a father for the second time.
Now that is warm.
