If you ask US multinationals why they choose Ireland as a base for investment, they’ll talk about the skilled workforce.
If you ask the Government or the IDA, they’ll talk about the stable policy environment.
Both groups tend to avoid the obvious answer: tax.
Ireland’s comparatively low rate tends to create unwanted noise in Brussels and Washington so officials play it down.
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But after four decades of near-continuous US investment, there’s another anchoring force: clustering. Having 16 of the top 20 global tech firms here, including celebrity names such as Apple, Microsoft and Alphabet, gives the IDA an ideal sales pitch.
Most to the world’s top pharma and medtech companies are also here. The small Cork town of Carrigtwohill plays host to five of them: AbbVie, Gilead, Merck, GE Healthcare and Stryker.
In an unstable global environment, you tend to go with the tried and tested. Failing that, you go where the big guns have already beaten a path. A recent Government report on Ireland’s semiconductor industry noted that “Intel’s presence has helped attract a cluster of suppliers, service providers and related industries, contributing to regional economic development and sectoral resilience”.
Success begets success.
Amid the current cycle of war, inflation and tariffs, all tagged as big threats to Ireland’s business model, the IDA has recorded its best three-year cycle of inward investment to date.
In 2023, the agency secured 248 investments, up 2.5 per cent on the previous year, supporting the creation of 19,000 jobs.
In 2024, it won 234 projects, supporting 13,500 jobs.
And last year, with Donald Trump’s tariff threats dominating the news cycle, it announced record results, securing 323 foreign investments, with the potential to create 15,300 new jobs.
The number of investments in 2025 was up 38 per cent on the previous year and included 78 “new-name” investments, which the IDA said highlighted “Ireland’s continued attraction for first-time investors”. Some 65 per cent of the investments hail from the US.
And the momentum has continued into this year, against a backdrop of war in the Middle East. In its latest half-year results, the IDA said it supported 190 investments, up 6 per cent on 2025.
If inward investment was your only yardstick for assessing the global environment, you’d be forgiven for thinking we’re living through a very stable period for global trade, and not experiencing the biggest backlash against globalisation in half a century.
Trump’s second term in office began with a threat to firms: either manufacture in the US or face tariffs. This was followed by 15 per cent tariffs on most EU imports and a lower rate of US corporation tax. The heads of multinationals queued to bend the knee in Trump’s court while pledging to divert more production back home. Pharma groups made pricing deals with the White House to avoid tariffs.
US commerce secretary Howard Lutnick characterised Ireland’s tax policy as a “scam” that Trump’s administration would end. Everything pointed to a setback for Ireland. But there has been little or no impact on FDI here. Multinationals are merely paying lip service to Trump’s Maga agenda.
“While the US has made itself more attractive – and less attractive for US groups to do things outside the US – it would be a big step to structure yourself based on current climate, or indeed any soundings about what might change in the future,” Grant Thornton’s Peter Vale said.
“You could also argue that for a US group to expand its Irish operation, or set up something new here, notwithstanding the less-competitive tax environment here, shows how Ireland is about so much more than tax. That’s something the IDA has always stressed. Tax laid the foundation but the building blocks are heavily reliant on the ecosystem and talent pool here,” he said.
Ireland’s housing crisis, the high cost of energy (something Intel has repeatedly raised), and the strain on infrastructure, including the grid, stand as the biggest risks to investment here. They certainly dominate the questions posed to the IDA during the press briefings but, as long the investment keeps flowing, the agency can bat them away.
[ USA 250: Legacy of US companies in Ireland enduresOpens in new window ]
Attesting to the increased competition for investment between countries, particularly with a more equalised tax environment, IDA Ireland chairman Feargal O’Rourke noted, at the agency’s recent half-year results, that many countries were “trying to eat our lunch” when it came to FDI.
One region that had upped its game was the Middle East and the Gulf states. But the Iran war has, according to one senior source, put the region “back a decade”, the implication being it could further cement Ireland’s leading position.
As Frederic Schneider, a senior fellow at the Middle East Council on Global Affairs, noted recently, “videos of explosions in Dubai, Doha and Manama ... have pierced the Gulf’s carefully cultivated image of security”.
The forces that see Ireland as taking an unfair share of the global investment cake are bigger than ever but they’ve yet to change the dynamic.
