Well, joining me live from the New York Stock Exchange to highlight the sustainability of this economic momentum is Michael Lohan, CEO of IDA Ireland.
Good morning, Michael.
Thank you so much for joining me.
Good morning, really.
So first and foremost, tell us about how Ireland has actually managed to navigate some of the headwinds in the past year and actually achieve this. driven growth.
Yeah, so, so last year, as we, as we know, was certainly the dynamic year in terms of global trade and, and, and, um, and tariffs.
Obviously was, was a big component of that.
But actually in the FDI base in Ireland, what we saw last year is we had a record year of investments in Ireland over the last 12 years.
Just our announcement at the end of, end of the year, at 323 discrete investments.
The largest number, as I said, in the history of our organization, which is almost 80 years in existence.
And what it speaks to is the depth and the longevity of FDI in Ireland and across sectors, in particular in terms of the financial services sector, in the fintech sector, technology and life sciences, and companies are really embedding their innovation in Ireland, and R&D is a significant growth driver of those numbers.
And FDI as well as R&D is something that we're paying attention to when it comes to the economy of Ireland.
But you also mentioned sectors, so I do want to get your take on how Ireland is actually positioning itself to handle potential shifts when it comes to global demand.
Yeah, so, so I think that's something we're very conscious of.
As Ireland, we're, we're a small open economy, so we've always had to be agile in terms of our approach.
And when we look at the enterprise base in Ireland, it really has evolved over the last number of decades.
And today, what we have is, we have an economy that's based on future looking technologies and sectors, the sectors I spoke about in technology.
So for example, the world's largest technology companies have a large.
Presence in Ireland, but also not just that, they're also looking at the cutting edge of their technology, of their innovation.
We saw investments in the last year and a half from Google, from Microsoft, very strong, but also a new entrants, OpenAI, Anthropic, you know, Harvey AI all establishing presence in Ireland as part of their growth.
And of course the same can be said across the life sciences sector and indeed the semiconductor sector in Ireland.
And of course this is a time when we're focusing on the advantages that artificial intelligence is opposing, but at the same time, we have to keep in mind at the end of the day that humans and talent is key.
So give us an idea of the talent advantage that Ireland has.
Yeah, I think that's a very valid point, because I think all of the conversation tends towards AI.
But in essence, really what it is, is it's technology through the adoption of Human capital and in IDA in Ireland, we've put a lot of focus on the human capital, um, not just, you know, in, in recent years, but actually from early education.
So in Ireland we have a very clear strategy in terms of AI adoption and AI literacy across the entire, um, I suppose population base.
But at an enterprise level, what we saw last year, this is something that was very unique, um, from an IDA perspective.
We supported our existing.
Companies to upscale and rescale almost 35,000 people within the portfolio.
And most of that has actually been driven towards technological change, innovation, and digitalization.
So making sure agile that the future skills needs are there and that we evolve the current workforce into the future, into the future areas of opportunity.
That's a keen focus for us as an agency and indeed at the heart of Irish government policy.
And while you mention the word opportunity, how can policymakers actually utilize the strong fiscal position currently in Ireland to ensure long-term stability when it comes to the domestic economy?
Yeah, so in Ireland, we've been very fortunate.
We are growing as an economy, we're growing as a population.
Our enterprise base is growing, both, both foreign direct investment and indigenous.
And of course that brings other challenges in terms of infrastructure and From an Irish state perspective, we have the largest infrastructure investment in the history of the state.
Almost 300 billion is being put into future infrastructure delivery in terms of, of power and we talk about AI and digital and how, how important that is in terms of power generation, in roads, in water.
All of those elements are so critically important as we build to meet the infrastructure needs of our population and indeed our enterprise base.
And in Ireland, we have a coherent plan at the center.
Government to build that infrastructure.
And of course couple of that infrastructure go back is skills.
We have to ensure we continue to bring the future skills, both from an Ireland academic um output and indeed in terms of attracting inward talent to Ireland.
Ireland is a location where actually world talent can come and actually have a new career and multiple careers in Ireland and we have to continue to be that open location for innovation and skills.
Thank you so much for joining us today.
