Read the Conversation
Conversation highlights:
- Ireland has built its economic success largely by attracting overseas investors, with life sciences representing the jewel in the crown of foreign investment, creating a third of all IDA jobs.
- The country hosts 13 of the top 15 companies in both medical technologies and biopharma, with employment in biopharma doubling over the last decade despite global uncertainties.
- Ireland's competitive advantages include a business-friendly tax regime, robust regulatory framework with over 80 FDA-approved facilities, and specialized talent development through institutions like NIBRT.
- Recent major investments include Eli Lilly's $2 billion drug substance facility in Limerick and AstraZeneca's new small molecule API facility, demonstrating continued confidence in Ireland's capabilities.
- The industry is evolving toward region-for-region manufacturing strategies, with Ireland positioned as a neutral, secure location for European market production amid global supply chain uncertainties.
- Future growth focuses on advanced modalities, including antibody drug conjugates, cell and gene therapy, with Ireland investing $30 million in new manufacturing capabilities and training infrastructure.
EF: How would you describe Ireland's role in the global life sciences landscape today?
RM: Ireland has built its economic success largely by attracting investors from overseas. We have a very small, open, business-focused economy, and we have always welcomed investment from overseas companies. It's ingrained in our DNA. The jewel in the crown of that foreign investment is the life sciences sector. A third of the jobs that IDA companies create are in the life sciences sector, split pretty evenly between medical technology and biopharma. Within biopharma, about 40% of the jobs are in biologics manufacturing, just under 40% in small molecule manufacturing, and the rest in supply chain management, pharmacovigilance, and other international services. It's a very vibrant part of the Irish economy and is growing strongly. The number of people employed by our client companies has doubled in the last 10 years and continues growing. Despite recent political turbulence in the world, we're still seeing companies invest. AstraZeneca just finished a new small-molecule API facility. Eli Lilly is investing $2 billion in a second drug substance facility in Limerick. Biogen recently invested in a facility in Ireland for the first time. We're still seeing all of that built out despite global uncertainty.
EF: What factors make Ireland attractive to life sciences companies?
RM: Companies choose Ireland for numerous reasons. We're a very business-friendly environment with an accessible government. We pride ourselves on having a competitive corporate tax regime, and our government has committed to maintaining this competitiveness while remaining compliant with OECD and European Union requirements. We're focused on ensuring talent availability within the country, both through research centers and universities. We established NIBRT, the National Institute for Bioprocessing Research and Training, about 12 years ago, which now trains about 5,000 people annually for the sector. We have a business-friendly immigration regime. If skills can't be found within the Irish economy, you can bring people in from the UK through our common labor market or from the European Union. About 20% of the workforce was not born in the country, creating a very vibrant labor market. Because we've had a successful biopharmaceutical industry for 50 years, we have the design, construction, construction management, and engineering skills to build on time and on budget. For companies with very high-value medicines and limited timeframes to recoup investment, they want certainty that they can build facilities on time and staff them properly. We have an excellent regulatory history. The HPRA, our regulator, is very robust. Over 170 manufacturing facilities operate in Ireland, with over 80 FDA-approved in addition to HPRA or EMA approval. A lot of global products come out of Ireland. Our sweet spot is where companies want to manufacture in a location where their manufacturing teams will be comfortable making products. Many countries offer lower corporate tax rates, but perhaps manufacturing teams wouldn't be as confident about getting the people or skills they need.
EF: How has Ireland maintained its position amid global supply chain uncertainties?
RM: I think that neutrality is part of it. Some of our older facilities that we might have been concerned about being over exposed to global supply chains are more secure now because large companies are looking at region-for-region manufacturing. They're manufacturing in the US for the US market, then manufacturing within Europe for the European market. Companies are being more conservative with their network strategies. We are a very safe, neutral location. There's sometimes a tendency when there's uncertainty for people to delay decisions, but to date, we've seen continued growth. We have 13 of the top 15 companies in both medical technologies and biopharma. Many companies also have operations in Singapore, Costa Rica, China, and the US. They're mainly global corporations with manufacturing facilities worldwide, so it remains a key focus for us. We added about 7% to the workforce of our biopharmaceutical companies in the last 12 months. Despite global turmoil, we're still a location of choice for large life sciences manufacturers.
EF: What drove the significant increase in Ireland's pharmaceutical exports recently?
RM: The largest single export from Ireland is biopharmaceuticals. Because of uncertainty about whether tariffs would be introduced, this disrupted the normal flow of exports. A lot of exports were brought forward as companies made sure products they were manufacturing got out of the country in case tariffs were introduced. No tariffs were introduced for biopharmaceuticals, though there were for some of our medical technology products. While exports have been growing steadily, with life sciences as the largest component, that particular spike was due to the potential tariff introduction disrupting normal patterns and bringing forward exports.
EF: Looking toward 2030, what skills will be most critical for Ireland's life sciences future?
RM: Life sciences have been late to digitalization and AI strategy, but that's certainly a huge topic of conversation regarding how it can be harnessed to improve and increase productivity. The crossover of digital skills together with chemical and biologics manufacturing skills represents the type of people we're trying to ensure both NIBRT and universities are creating as graduates. Because the industry is so regulated, the regulator will have to be on board and approve what's being done. Going into the future, I think that's the key skill. I can see that the next three or four years will continue to grow for our industry in Ireland because I know what investments have already started and are ongoing. We're ensuring people will be available to fuel those investments. I think it will continue to be a region-for-region manufacturing strategy.
For Europe, if somebody's looking at manufacturing a product in Europe, Ireland is going to be on the table. In addition to US companies, we have significant European investment: Merck KGaA, Sanofi, Ipsen, Servier, Grifols from Spain, and Hovione from Portugal. We also have SK Biotech from Korea, Teva from Israel, WuXi from China with a monoclonal antibody manufacturing facility, and Takeda and Astellas from Japan. Astellas is building a new sterile fill finish for one of their ADC products in a second site in County Kerry.
EF: How is Ireland positioning itself for emerging therapeutic modalities?
RM: As more products are outsourced and manufactured externally, sites in Ireland are becoming lead sites, getting involved in early-stage Chemistry, Manufacturing, and Controls (CMC) design of clinical products and clinical manufacturing. AstraZeneca publicly stated when opening the new API facility that they want to build manufacturing capability for new products coming through. While the bulk will be externally manufactured, they want some control over their own manufacturing as well. We certainly saw that as a result of COVID and the logjams in manufacturing supply chains. Small molecule and monoclonal antibody global capacity is still growing about 7% annually, so we'll continue seeing people building capacity in that area. We're seeing significant interest in Antibody-Drug Conjugates (ADCs), both in sterile fill finish, which is more complex given the cytotoxic nature of the conjugated drug, and companies getting involved in linker technology. Although nobody has started conjugating here yet, we have substantial interest. We have gene therapy with MeiraGTx in Shannon manufacturing both viral vectors and plasmids. We have a cell therapy activity as well. We're seeing the range of different modalities increasing and trying to ensure we have people available across all of these. How we've grown the industry so much is by holding onto all that small molecule manufacturing while winning the biologics. For the future, our strategy is to hold onto what we have for as long as possible while ensuring we remain competitive. We invested about $30 million over the last number of years in a new cell and gene suite for NIBRT to ensure research into those manufacturing methods and training in those areas was happening as well.
EF: What would be your dream project for Ireland's life sciences sector?
RM: Probably the dream project would be an end-to-end antibody drug conjugate manufacturing project. Doing everything: manufacturing the monoclonal antibody, the cytotoxic chemical, the linker, conjugating them, and then doing the sterile filling in an aseptic fill finish facility. An interesting thing about the life sciences sector in Ireland is that it's distributed all over Ireland, with a lot in regional locations. The Astellas ADC facility is in County Kerry, right on the west coast from a tourist point of view. AbbVie's manufacturing facility that produces the global drug product for their neurotoxin treatment is in Westport, again on the west coast, in a tourist area. These types of facilities create jobs for everyone from PhDs to forklift truck drivers and can be transformative in rural locations.
