Offshoring, Inward Investment and Export Performance in Ireland

This chapter discusses the unique situation of Ireland among other European countries: better known as a destination for offshoring rather than a typical developed-country source of offshoring. The chapter is organized as follows. Section 2 focuses on Ireland’s emergence and evolution as a manufacturing export platform and includes case studies of three of the most important foreign direct investment (FDI)-intensive manufacturing sectors of recent times: ICT, pharma-chem, and medical devices. Section 3 considers foreign-owned internationally traded services, which are of more recent provenance, and includes case studies of software and IT services and international financial services. Section 4 analyzes how Ireland’s inward FDI sectors have fared over the course of the current global recession. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the factors that account for Ireland’s success in attracting foreign direct investment.