The Corporate Takeover of Ireland, by UCD’s Kieran Allen, was published in 2007 by the Irish Academic Press, where he is joined by such as Bryan Fanning (also of UCD) and Diarmaid Ferriter. Heavyweights, in other words. A serious business. So why is the book so badly marred by typos and other errors?

“complimentary” where “complementary” was obviously meant (179).
“DPP” (196) not explained and not included in the list of abbreviations at the start of the book. The extra attentive reader finds a reference to the Director of Public Prosecutions only on page 198.
“€25 per cent” (170), whatever that is.
“resources that could be going into tackling MRSA or the wider A&E crisis is used…” (163)
“the Dutch sent back fifty-nine containers of Irish waste that had been discovered at Rotherham” (206) or perhaps discovered in Rotterdam?
“In the six-year period between 1997 and 2000” (210)

There are so many mistakes (there seems to be a digit missing from Austria’s percentage score in the table on page 110) that you start to wonder about the simplest of statements: “prices [are] 148 per cent above the EU average” (228) – or are they 148% of the EU average?

I don’t know what the division of labour is on a book published by an academic press (though I do know how hard it is to proof your own writing). When acknowledgements are made of this kind of thing authors usually thank their proofreaders but accept all responsibility for any mistakes. But surely publishers also have a duty to check what they are publishing? (The Irish Academic Press’s editor is one Lisa Hyde; no one is credited with proofing the book – perhaps publishers don’t bother any more?). The publisher’s website is not encouraging. The link to “Books” (an important one, I would have thought, on a publisher’s site) is dead. The “Reviews” link is live but empty of reviews. The link to their British Parliamentary Papers site is also dead.