Once you get past the business jargon in the Industrial Development Authority’s (IDA) new five-year strategy – among which are gems such as “evolve to win”, ”advocate for ambition” and “ecosystem for extraordinary partnership” – you see that the total jobs which it is targeting from new projects come to 75,000 over the next five years.
This would be a strong result, given the unpredictable times we live in and the fact that investment has slowed even before Donald Trump entered office, in part as a result of Ireland’s infrastructural shortcomings. Last year the job commitments were 13,000, so the target implies something of an increase.
Understandably, the document does not contain a target for actual annual job creation in IDA client companies – in other words gain minus losses.
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Total job numbers in the foreign direct investment (FDI) sector have jumped from 200,000 a decade ago to 300,000 now. The IDA has had an extraordinary run and job losses have generally been very limited.
Now, as chairman Feargal O’Rourke concedes, part of the job is the defensive one of protecting existing jobs and investment, as well as winning new ones.
It is fair to assume that he told the Insights podcast with Seán O’Rourke recently that if you told him that at the end of this year, Ireland will still have more than 300,000 directly employed by FDI companies, be collecting about €30 billion in corporate tax and will have avoided a trade war with the US, then “I’d grab it and run”.
With Donald Trump threatening new tariffs against pharma imports to the US – where Ireland is a big player – even the IDA warns of the possibility of disruption, though, he says, as much of Ireland’s exports are not finished products we might escape the worst of it.
Still, it would be hard to see the State avoiding a hit in terms of tax and investment if Trump does go through with his threat for 25 per cent tariffs. But it remains to be seen if he will and, if he does, how long they stay in place. For now big pharma will sit tight.
