It looks like an Irish woman is responsible for Apple’s massive profits

One of the biggest brands in the world, and one of the most profitable, might owe a large chunk of its success to one Cork woman.

By Adrian Collins

Apple has made quite a lot of profit in recent years, so much so that at one stage they had enough money to supply everyone in Germany with 32GB iPads, to give everyone in the world 17 Oreo cookies or (and this is our favourite) enough sweet cash to send the entire population of Vatican City into space. Twice.

So our point is that they're breaking bread over at Apple, but it seems that one Cork woman might be responsible for a whole lot of their large chunk of change.

Cathy Kearney is an accountant who is one of the heads of Apple's European operations, and in 2011, she earned Apple $22 billion dollars from her Cork-based company.

According to The Guardian, Cathy is pretty media-shy, and there aren't a whole load of photos of her floating about, but she did have to answer a few questions recently when the US Government wanted to know where all the money was coming from.

They mainly wanted to know about Apple Operations International, which Kearney is the only director of, and the company has no staff, but somehow ended up with $30billion of Apple's profits running through it in the last four years.

No comment from us on that, and no comment from her either, it would seem, as she has denied requests for interviews from The Daily Mail as well as The Guardian, but certainly, as Apple's CEO Tim Cook has stated, her success as the head of European Operations as “unprecedented”.

Impressive stuff, eh?