Is that actually true? According to [1], McDonalds (in 2020) was buying EUR160e6 worth of Irish beef accounting for 20% of its beef sales across Europe. It would make quite a loss for them if they shipped beef into Ireland while buying that much locally and exporting it. I can't find anything that mentions this "100% Irish beef" theory.
Arguably, the short scale, not the long scale used in Ireland is obtuse. 12 zeroes for billion and 18 zeroes for trillion, 24 for quadrillion etc is 6n where n is numerical value of Latin prefix, with short scale you've got 3n+3
If you're going to use the scientific notation for billions, you should just use it for everything. I don't think it's so obtuse anyway, it's exactly how I'd spell that number in code.
I think "1 million" means 1e6 everywhere. But the confusion might be because "1 billion" means 1e9 in USA but 1e12 in UK/Ireland. "1 trillion" similarly is 1e12 in USA but 1e18 in UK/Ireland. This is called the short/long scales. It's a headache.
[1] https://www.rte.ie/news/coronavirus/2020/0323/1124769-corona...