Ireland

The EIS country pages provide for each of the European countries covered by the EIS 2007 a performance chart showing performance by indicator relative to the EU mean, a radar graph showing the innovation performance for each of the innovation dimensions relative to the country’s SII performance and the data tables showing, where available, time series data for the SII, the dimensions and each of the indicators.

More information is available on each country is available in the EIS report and its thematic papers which are available on the INNO Metrics website). The EIS 2007 thematic papers provide information on services innovation, the impact of differences in socio-economic conditions on innovation performance, innovation efficiency and non-R&D based innovation.

Ireland’s overall innovation performance places it among the group of “innovation followers” with a level of performance above the EU average but below the group of “innovation leaders”. Other EU countries with a similar level of performance as “innovation followers” are Luxembourg, Austria, the Netherlands, France and Belgium. The trend in Ireland’s innovation performance over the last five years has been about the same as the EU average trend.

Among the five dimensions of innovation, Ireland is strongest in Innovation drivers where it is well above the EU average on indicator of S& E graduates. It is relatively weak in the Intellectual property dimension, where it is below EU average on the indicators of patent applications and Community industrial designs. The analysis suggests that it has above average efficiency in transforming innovation inputs into Application outputs, but is below average in transforming such inputs into Intellectual property outputs.