Foreign Direct Investment in Ireland 2021

Further Globalisation effects

Increasingly, for highly globalised countries such as Ireland, it is important to account for globalisation effects in data. Redomiciled PLCs have, as previously illustrated, significant impacts in some of our statistical outputs. To account for these impacts, it is important to separate those figures which are influenced by Redomiciled PLCs and illustrate which data are reflective of firms that are native to Ireland i.e., those firms which have originated here.

While in CSO publications, we refer to these firms as Redomiciled PLCs, international organisations have termed the concept “corporate inversion”. The OECD’s BPM6 manual defines a corporate inversion as “corporate restructuring of a transnational enterprise group such that the original parent company in one economy becomes a subsidiary of the new parent in another economy. In addition, ownership of a group of enterprises may be shifted to the new parent company.”

Beginning in 2008, in reaction to proposed changes to corporate tax rates in the United Kingdom and the United States, several multinational corporations relocated their group headquarters to Ireland. Since that year, there have been additional firms that have relocated, while some opted to return.

Redomiciled PLCs which relate to Irish Firms

Figure 4.1 shows the main OFATS outputs from the business register shown by which data relates to the Redomiciled PLCs and which relates to native Irish firms. As seen, these Redomiciled PLCs have had a significant effect on our foreign affiliate statistics. As most of their operations are abroad, they have significant employment outside of Ireland. The graph also shows approximately 425 thousand persons affiliated with native Irish firms abroad. These data were sourced from the 2020 CSO Business Register OFATS Survey.

Tangible Fixed assets

Figure 4.6 shows the tangible fixed assets of the Redomiciled PLCs in millions of euros. The reason for the large variation in these fixed assets is the dynamic nature of the reporting on these companies. A firm may be headquartered in Ireland one year and the next it may leave; in which case, its fixed assets would no longer be considered Irish owned for statistical purposes and show up in this graph. In 2021, the Redomiciled PLCs held just over €300 million in tangible fixed assets domestically.