Answering Ireland’s call

Relocating a business to Irish shores can be a positive and profitable experience for any multinational, as Ireland has a lot to offer in areas like skilled workforce, standard of living and an open and transparent tax regime.

Anna Scally, head of technology and media, KPMG Ireland, says: “We’re home to entrepreneurs, innovators and business leaders in every sector. They choose Ireland for many different reasons but they each have one thing in common – a desire to succeed in a business-friendly environment that’s great for business and great for living.”

So what boxes does Ireland tick for multinationals looking to set up a base here?

Irish labour productivity is 74 per cent above the EU average while labour costs have remained relatively stable, according to the IDA.

This is one of the areas where we “score highly”, according to Brian O’Gorman, managing partner with law firm Arthur Cox.

“We score highly on what I would call the quality and performance of the workforce. I think we also score highly on flexibility; the Irish workforce is open, adaptable and flexible in terms of working hours, openness to travel and taking on new responsibilities. The overall legal framework for employees in Ireland, certainly from a US multinational perspective, scores highly. I think the one area we need to look at is availability and finding enough people in areas like technology – it’s an area we can struggle on. There’s the argument around not producing enough STEM [science, technology, engineering and mathematics] graduates and I think if you asked a lot of the big US technology giants they would probably say there’s not enough focus on STEM in Ireland and [we’re] not producing enough graduates with STEM background.”

Talent

John Ryan, chief executive of Great Place to Work agrees that talent is the main attraction.

“Ireland is still seen as a fantastic place to do business. Regulation is just enough to ensure good governance and legal compliance, but it is definitely business-friendly. There are also fantastic clusters of industries in areas such as pharma and IT, which enables those critical sparks of innovation. While competitor locations around the world point to the tax rate and we are seeing similar deals available in most countries now, it’s actually becoming more and more visible that it is the quality of our talent that’s attracting FDI.”

Ryan says Irish universities, while maybe not scoring as well as institutions abroad, are viewed as very connected to business and industry, and the graduates are seen as work-ready.

“Ireland has also been upping its game in terms of attracting more females into STEM subjects. The real deficits relate to certain niche languages, and to the quality of the leadership. It is increasingly difficult to secure high-quality C-Suite [senior executive] talent, as often Irish C-Suite talent wants to get global experience and will ultimately move.”

In terms of commercial rents, O’Gorman says they have increased in recent years and “we are in danger of becoming an expensive jurisdiction from a commercial rent perspective”.

However, he says there is a huge amount of commercial property new-build coming on stream in 2018 and 2019, so that may have the impact of stabilising rent.

According to the IDA, a significant number of new-office construction projects are under way that will deliver 3.5 million square feet of office accommodation to the market

In terms of living accommodation, Ryan says Dublin in particular has a need for more small, high-quality studio-style apartments that are suitable for single workers, and high-rise in the docks and elsewhere would assist better infrastructure.

Another draw to multinationals is Ireland’s size and diversity, according to Ryan: “It is culturally diverse and far more inclusive than other countries, particularly our cities. Our cities aren’t cheap but are pretty comparable to other countries. Rural Ireland is generally no more than a two- or three-hour drive from any city, which in European terms is nothing – however, FDIs in a rural community are really welcomed and will find it easy to engage and embed in with the local community.”

Ryan says it also helps that Ireland will soon be the only English-speaking eurozone country.

O’ Gorman agrees: “Language is important, a lot of countries we compete with for big international projects are not English-speaking so that is an advantage.”