This new release details the existence and characteristics of high-growth enterprises in the Irish business economy. The release analyses enterprises active over a three-year period and who had 10 or more employees at the beginning of the period. Enterprises in the Structural Business Statistics series were linked across multiple years to measure their growth. Both turnover and employment are the criteria used to determine if firms were high-growth enterprises. This release gives a more detailed insight into the contribution of higher performing enterprises to the Irish economy.

A high-growth enterprise is any enterprise with an annualised growth rate of greater than 10% in turnover and/or employment over the three-year period. A very high-growth enterprise had growth greater than 20% per annum. This release also details the contribution of young high-growth enterprises, known as "gazelles", to the Irish business economy. A young enterprise is defined as an enterprise which is less than five years old.

The key facts from this release are:

• In 2017, of the qualified enterprises, 42.3% were high-growth enterprises in terms of turnover and/or employment growth.
• Of the 6,967 high-growth enterprises in 2017, 2,356 met the high-growth criteria for both turnover and employment.
• There were 1,026 enterprises which had high growth in employment only in 2017, the highest total in the last four years. See Figure 1 and Headline Table.