And why would it?

The aggregates and building materials Goliath has spent the past 30 years steadily building a foreign asset base. The recent 1bn acquisition of US-based APAC is more typical of the the type of deal size CRH has to do now to get major headlines.

CRH has evolved to provide a useful route map for other Irish firms to follow: carefully evaluate markets, dip a toe, and then solidify the presence if things work out.

Bank of Ireland chief economist Dan McLaughlin recently pointed out that Irish investments abroad are contributing to a rise in indigenous incomes. More companies, public and private, are achieving the critical mass that allows them to venture outside their traditional geographical markets. Some, such as Kerry Group, are now old hands at acquisitions. Others . . . Glanbia, IAWS, Grafton Group, Kingspan to name just some . . . are perhaps in the relatively early corporate adulthood of foreign investment, but have carved out effective joint ventures and secured acquisitions that are affording them solid growth potential.

McLaughlin said the impact of Irish foreign investment is already being felt.

Irish income earned abroad rose 39%, he said, in the first half of 2006.

"Even when a small market is growing rapidly, it's still a small market, " McLaughlin said. "We tend to talk about multinational investment in Ireland, which has been significant, but relatively highincome economies are often capital exporters, not capital importers. So as our income has gone up, we would expect to see more capital exports."

He added that the growth in Irish corporate profitability abroad has been increasingly rapid. Geographical diversification also helps to offset the impact of a decline in any one market.

"You're concentrating your risk if you're overexposed to just one economy."

CRH finance director Myles Lee said that, while such geographical diversification is likely to be a growing trend among Irish companies, it's also a tougher global market now than when CRH made its first forays abroad.

"We started at a point when there probably wasn't as much competition around for overseas assets, " he said.

"Now there's a welter of money out there chasing global development opportunities so it is tougher. But you have to start at some point and there are still opportunities out there still."

NCB analyst John Sheehan agrees.

"A lot of Irish companies have a record of going overseas, " he said. "Many of them are getting bigger too, so they can contemplate deals that in the past they wouldn't have.

They know their strengths and limitations. They're also building reputations in their respective sectors that put them on the radar when banks are trying to find buyers for businesses."

Ireland is simply to small to support many companies with major, or even relatively modest ambitions. Capital outflows have accelerated on a corporate and private level in recent years. As a small economy that equates to just over 1% of the European Union total continues robust growth, expect the Irish investment footprint to deepen and broaden in the future.