In recent years, Ireland's gross domestic product (GDP) has been driven by foreign-owned non-financial corporations (sector S.11a), as illustrated in Figure 2.1. In 2025, 60% of Ireland's GDP was value added by this small cohort of foreign-owned companies (was 59% in 2024). GDP therefore provides much information about foreign-controlled corporations active in Ireland, but this obscures the trends in domestically-controlled activity. To provide better insights into the Irish economy, this release shows non-financial corporations in three subsectors: foreign-owned (S.11a) domestic (S.11b) and redomiciled PLCs (S.11c) sub-sectors.
As can be seen from Figure 2.1, large foreign-controlled multinationals increased their value added in Ireland in 2025 and this helped increase GDP. Figure 2.2 breaks down the main direct contributions of foreign-owned corporations (S.11a) to GDP into four elements (they also contribute indirectly through purchase of goods and services from domestic corporations).
The largest part of their GDP impact is net profit, and this element suffered a decrease in 2023: it went from €170bn in 2022 to €137bn, a 19% decrease. It partially rebounded in 2024 to €152bn, an increase of 11%, though these net profits were still lower than in 2022. In 2025 it increased by 26% to €191bn, well above the 2022 net profit figure.
Net profit is also the element that has the least impact on the domestic economy: it flows out to the rest of the world as dividends and reinvested earnings. For this reason Gross National Income (GNI, B.5G), which is after these outflows have been accounted for, is a better measure of domestic income.
The next largest element is consumption of fixed capital (CFC) or depreciation, which is included in both Ireland's GDP (B.1G) and GNI. Since the 2015 level-shift in the national accounts, this number has grown substantially and stood at €111bn in 2024 and €97bn in 2025. However, because the owners of the capital which is being consumed are not in Ireland this too can have a limited impact on the domestic economy.
The taxes and wages are smaller relative to the overall GDP impact but large in national terms (€27 billion and €49 billion respectively in 2025). These have the biggest impact on the domestic economy of the four elements of foreign-controlled NFCs GVA, since they are all transferred to government and households and are available for domestic consumption and investment. These continued to grow in 2025. Together these two items rose by €7bn (9.7%), similar to the 9.5% increase in GVA for the sector.
In our PxStat tables, estimates are provided of gross value added at basic prices broken down by institutional sector, economic activity (A21 sections of NACE Rev.2) and by component (compensation of employees and gross operating surplus at basic prices). Users should note that such estimated breakdowns by NACE and institutional sector are, by their nature, subject to greater uncertainty than splits by NACE or institutional sector alone.
Basic price gross operating surplus is after the addition of non-product taxes (D.29) and the subtraction of non-product subsidies (D.39).) This allows for analysis within each sector and sub-sector. For example, Figure 2.3 shows the compensation of employees paid by non-financial corporations by economic activity in 2025. As we might expect, most of the wages in Manufacturing and ICT come from foreign-owned corporations, but they also pay approximately half in Administrative and Support Services and a significant minority in the wholesale and retail trade sector (€7.3bn out of €17.4bn total). On the other hand, in sectors such as Construction and Accommodation & Food Services, relatively little of the wage bill is paid by foreign-owned corporations.
Wages (D.1) in domestically-owned corporations increased in 2025 while the gross profit (B.2A3G) was flat. The bar graph (left axis) in Figure 2.4 below illustrates the values of profits earned and wages paid in the sector. The line graphs (right axis) show the profit share, that is, the share of total GVA that is profit. The profit share of domestic-corporations rose during the pandemic, after several years of decline, but have subsequently declined again. The profit share remained below the Euro-area aggregate in 2025 at 27% compared to 39%. These were 28% and 40% respectively in 2024.
For Foreign-owned NFCs in Ireland (S.11a) the profit share is extraordinarily high, at around 80% or more in recent years, reflecting the profit recorded in Ireland that arises from these companies' global operations. By separating out these firms, we can see that domestic corporations are within European norms. Profit in Figure 2.4 is shown at factor cost (as in table ISA03) not basic prices, that is, not adjusted for taxes and subsidies on production.
Capital investment is an important indicator of likely economic growth since it is the acquisition of assets to be used in production in this and future years. The investment rate is calculated as the ratio of gross fixed capital formation (P51G) to gross value added (B1G). As we noted above, foreign-owned corporations have been bringing large capital investments to Ireland in recent years and this has driven up capital investment sharply. While it has dropped substantially in recent years, the investment rate for the NFC sector (S.11) as a whole reached over 80% in 2019: this reflects the movement of Intellectual Property by multinationals within their group, and distorts any estimates for Irish NFCs. When we remove these corporations, the remaining domestically-owned corporations have been developing their fixed assets at a slower, steadier rate. Figure 2.5 below illustrates this investment rate for domestic corporations. In 2025, they invested over €10bn in new assets for use in production over several years. This represents an investment rate of 12%, similar to 2024. The euro-area rate has been consistently higher and was 22% in 2025.
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