Why did Henry Ford specifically build his first factory outside the U.S. in Cork, Ireland?

As Ford was taking off as a company, Henry Ford felt a calling from his family's native home. Accompanied by his wife Clara Ford and their son Edsel on a trip to Cork in 1912, Henry Ford went as far as to attempt to purchase the old family homestead, which he had hoped to relocate and rebuild near his home in the U.S ... He returned to the country in 1917 to establish Henry Ford & Son Ltd., which would build Fordson tractors ... The Ford Cork Plant, built on an old race course along the Lee River, became the first purpose-built Ford factory outside of North America - at one point in the late 1920s, it was the world's largest tractor factory.

Henry Ford founded the company in Cork in Ireland, then part of the U.K., on 17 April 1917. This was the first factory Ford had purposely built outside of America anywhere in the world. He decided to build his first factory abroad in Cork because Ballinascarty, County Cork, was home to the Ford family for more than two centuries, before their emigration to America in 1832. Work on building the plant took two years.