In the Regional Accounts, the national economy is broken into ten economic sectors, known as the NACE A10 classification. A description of each sector is shown in Table 6.1 (see Background Notes).
Industry including manufacturing is the largest of the A10 sectors in all but three regions: the Midland, Border and Dublin. The South-West region sees the largest contribution from Industry where the sector makes up 76.8% of its regional GVA. Significant reliance on industry is also observed in the Mid-West where it accounts for 41.9% of its GVA respectively, followed by the West (41.2%), South-East (27.9%), Mid-East (24.7%), and Border (22.5%) regions.
Information and Communication makes up 37.2% of the GVA generated in Dublin, it is the only region that sees a significant share of its GVA coming from Information & Communication; Professional, Admin & Support Services contribute 15.4% to Dublin's GVA, followed by Distribution, Transport, Hotels & Restaurants (10.6%) and Industry (10.3%).
The Border and Midland regions see the greatest portion of their regional GVA come from Public Administration, Education & Health accounting for 25% and 25.9% respectively. Both the Midlands and Border regions are the lowest performers in terms of GVA and disposable income due to a smaller presence of more profitable activities such as Industry or Information & Communication in these regions.
The percentage breakdown of the total number employed by A10 sector at NUTS 3 level is shown in Figure 3.2. The distribution between sectors changes significantly compared to Figure 3.1 showing the GVA generated by certain sectors is not necessarily proportional to the number working within the sector. While we have seen the total number of workers varies considerably between regions, the distribution of workers between A10 sectors stays relatively consistent. The top three sectors in all regions except Dublin city and county are Public Admin., Education & Health, Distribution, Transport, Hotels & Restaurants, and Industry (including Manufacturing). In Dublin City and County, Professional, Admin & Support Services and the Information and Communication sectors takes precedence over Industry due to the presence of large IT multinationals.
A revision was made to figures for the Southern and Eastern & Midland regions in Tables 3.3 and 3.4 on 10 February 2025. This was due an error in figures for Total Employment for these two regions.
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