IRELAND

Ireland is in the group of Innovation followers, with an innovation performance above the EU27 average. It’s rate of improvement just below that of the EU27. Relative strengths, compared to the country’s average performance, are in Human resources and Economic effects and relative weaknesses are in Firm investments and Throughputs.

Over the past 5 years, Human resources and Finance and support have been the main drivers of the improvement in innovation performance, in particular as a result from strong growth in Lifelong learning (13.7%), Private credit (12.7%) and Broadband access by firms (26.9%). Performance in Firm investments, Linkages & entrepreneurship, Throughputs and Innovators has worsened, in particular due to a decrease in Non-R&D innovation expenditures (-5.7%), Innovative SMEs collaborating with others (-7.0%), Community designs (-7.2%) and SMEs introducing product or process innovations (-3.3%).