I think I would prioritise the most important differences between UK, US and Ireland differently than you do. US and Ireland both offer competitive starting salaries which can attract people around the world, though of course what anyone gets depends on how many offers they have etc. (One point in relation to this is that there’s no salary related excuse for DCU or others in Dublin in particular not getting applicants from the world’s very best PhD programmes). The UK does not compete here, which is why noone with a US PhD will look at the UK job market save in extremis or for family reasons.

Then at the top end of professors etc, the Irish outcome is pretty good in terms of incentives to perform and perhaps to get people to move within Europe, but does not allow the sort of mega-package (with big house thrown in, job for spouse etc) that top US researchers will try to leverage with a few offers in hand when they’re about 8-10 years in. Perhaps that’s the sort of person you were looking for in the boom? The British system does have that flexibility in theory, but its flexibility from such a low salary base that British universities aren’t really competitive for such ‘top hires’ despite this flexibility.

I should add one more thing, which is that in the US, UK and I think Germany there are such outstanding universities in terms of research ambition and environment that people sometimes take a salary penalty just to be there, of which some of the very poorly paid teaching positions at Oxbridge are only the extreme examples. Irish universities can’t really play that card, alas.

That being said, finding out that pay did not vary across disciplines, that pay was non-negotiable, and that even a well-paid lecturer could not afford a decent place to live in Dublin made the argument for “highly-paid” fallacious and “fairly-paid” a laughingstock.

Ireland’s academic pay scale system, regardless of value, is as idiotic as the CAO system—it was designed in the idea of “fairness” for politically correct reasons and puts Ireland at a significant disadvantage.

- plenty of elite professors making $300K plus.

The big difference between Ireland on the one hand, and the UK and the US on the other, is that with us rates are fixed and are equal for all. In the US and the UK individuals can negotiate, or can be offered, significantly higher salaries at the discretion of the universities if the institutions really want them and if the job has to be made attractive to them. At the height of the boom this put us at a great disadvantage in Ireland.