The level of foreign direct investment in Ireland, relative to the size of our economy, is one of the highest in the world and certainly one of the highest in Europe. Ireland has for a long time received a far higher proportion of foreign direct investment inflows into the EU than our population, which is 1% of the EU's total, would suggest. In 2000, for example, Ireland received 10% of the EU's foreign direct investment, a large proportion of it from the United States. While 2001 ended with a small net loss in IDA backed jobs, the period between 1992 and 2002, taken as a whole, showed a rise of almost 44% in the number of foreign direct investment companies operating in Ireland and an increase of over 75% in permanent employment. Just over 50% of job approvals between 1992 and 2001 came from clients already located in Ireland, with the rest coming from greenfield projects.
The focus on developing the IDA's existing clients is therefore critical. The IDA is actively seeking to facilitate a progression in the sophistication and breadth of its clients' Irish operations. This means not only increasing value in their manufacturing operations, but also adding corporate level innovation, such as research and development, and service, logistics and supply chain management functions alongside manufacturing. The objective is to create more rounded and strategically important operations within the overall corporation. Such operations are better embedded and more suited to the competitive characteristics of the Irish economy in the medium to long term.
The support on offer to mobile investors includes a comprehensive service to client companies, by co-ordinating services and supports to ensure efficient and trouble free start-ups. To increase embeddedness in the economy, the IDA has adopted a strategic model of the path multinationals might typically follow as they move into higher value functions. The IDA has targeted moves on this model by client companies and has a set of instruments to support this. It is also backed up by a number of incentive schemes focused, for example, on encouraging clients to undertake the establishment of a dedicated research and development centre in Ireland.