International Financial Services Centre
The International Financial Services Centre ( IFSC ) is an area of central Dublin and part of the CBD established in the 1980s as an urban regeneration area and Special Economic Zone (SEZ) on the derelict state owned former port authority lands of the reclaimed North Wall and George's Dock areas of the Dublin Docklands. The term has now morphed into use as a metonym for the Irish financial services industry as well as being used as an address and still being classified as an SEZ. It officially began in 1987 as an SEZ on an 11-hectare docklands site in central Dublin, with EU approval to apply a 10% corporate tax rate for "designated financial services activities" on the site. Before the expiry of this EU approval in 2005, the Irish Government legislated to effectively have a national flat rate by reducing the overall Irish corporate tax rate from 32% to 12.5% which was introduced in 2003. An additional primary goal of the IFSC was to assist the urban renewal and developm...