Increases in personal taxation in the past year risk driving highly qualified Irish workers abroad and away from the IFSC, according to the head of one of the biggest IFSC firms.

"Mobile Irish people will move if your income tax environment is not competitive and it's not today," said Willie Slattery, managing director of State Street International (Ireland), which employs 2,100 in Ireland. "Having an uncompetitive tax environment does a lot of damage to your labour market competitiveness, which is vital to your ability to compete in high-skill cross-border activity."

According to research PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) provided to State Street, an Irish married couple with two children now takes home a smaller percentage of their pay after tax than their counterparts in France, Germany, the US and the UK. For those earning a combined salary of €150,000 or more, Ireland has the highest effective personal tax rates among that group of countries, the research showed.

He said the tax rises have already had a "palpable impact" on the economic contribution of internationally traded services in Ireland.