Large enterprises share of R&D expenditure at 50% in 2013

Enterprises that employ 250 persons or more had the greatest share of R&D expenditure in 2013 with just under 50% of all actual expenditure attributed to large enterprises. This accounted for €1bn of the total spend. Small enterprises with less than 50 persons engaged spent almost €445m on R&D in 2013 which accounted for 22% of the spend. Medium sized enterprises employing between 50 and 249 persons spent €576m in the same period which represents over 28% of total spend.  

The breakdown of R&D expenditure in 2014 by employment size class shows a similar distribution to 2013 with small enterprises estimating that they would spend almost €481m. Medium enterprises forecast a spend of €544m. Large enterprises estimating that they would spend just under €1.1bn in 2014.  See Figure 2 and Table 1.

Labour Costs account for 61% of all R&D expenditure

In 2013, enterprises reported that over €1.2bn was spent on labour costs, which accounted for 61% of all R&D expenditure. Other current costs, which include materials, supplies, equipment and overheads associated with R&D, had a spend of nearly €636m which accounted for 31% of total expenditure. The remaining expenditure of €147m was accounted for by capital expenditure with just over 50% of capital expenditure being spent on Instruments and Equipment wholly acquired for R&D purposes. See Figure 3 and Tables 2 and 3.

Two-thirds of R&D expenditure is by Foreign owned enterprises

Foreign owned enterprises accounted for 65% of all R&D expenditure, with just over €1.2bn being spent on current expenditure which represented 93% of all expenditure of foreign owned enterprises. The remaining 7% or €90m was spent on capital expenditure. Irish owned enterprises in comparison spent just over €700m on R&D with current expenditure at €645m accounting for nearly 92% of this expenditure. The remaining 8% or €58m was spent on capital expenditure. See Figure 4 and Table 1.

The largest 100 enterprises in terms of R&D spend accounted for over €1.4bn, or 70%, of the total R&D expenditure in 2013. Of these top 100 enterprises, 80% of the spend can be attributed to foreign owned enterprises.  The spend of all other enterprises amounted to over €600m. Of this spend, €179m, or 30%, can be attributed to foreign owned enterprises with Irish owned enterprises accounting for over €426m, or 70%, of the spend.

Services sector accounted for 57% of total R&D expenditure

R&D spending was highest in the services sector which accounted for 57% of all expenditure. Spending in this sector was just under €1.2bn in 2013 while the manufacturing sector spent over €864m on R&D. For the purposes of this survey it should be noted that spending in the services sector includes the spend from all other non-manufacturing sectors. The value of this contribution to the services sector total is not significant.  

Service sector enterprises reported that labour costs accounted for nearly 75% of all current expenditure while manufacturing enterprises stated that 54% of current expenditure was related to labour costs. In terms of capital expenditure, manufacturing enterprises spent just over €93m which represents over 63% of all capital expenditure on R&D. See Figure 5 and Tables 2 and 3.  

Southern and Eastern region account for 80% of all R&D expenditure

Total R&D spending in the Southern and Eastern region (SE) region was in excess of  €1.6bn in 2013 which accounted for 80% of all R&D expenditure.  The remainder of all R&D expenditure (20%), which accounted for €400m of the total spend, was spent in the Border, Midland and Western (BMW) region.  94% of all R&D spending in the SE region can be attributed to current expenditure while the corresponding figure for the BMW region was 89%.  See Figure 6 and Table 1.

Researchers account for 55% of all R&D staff 

Enterprises were asked to indicate the numbers of staff who devoted any of their time to R&D activities. R&D personnel includes researchers (PhD qualified and others), technicians and other support staff. In total, there were 24,785 persons engaged in R&D in Ireland in 2013.  Of this total, 55% or 13,750 persons were employed as researchers, of which 2,181 were PhD qualified researchers.  In addition, there were 5,893 technicians which accounted for 24% of all staff and the remaining 21% of R&D personnel were accounted for by 5,142 support staff.  See Figure 9 and Table 4.

Small enterprises account for 73% of R&D active enterprises

In 2013, nearly 1,500 small enterprises were engaged in R&D. They accounted for 73% of all R&D active enterprises compared with 378 medium enterprises which accounted for 19% of R&D active enterprises and 143 large enterprises which accounted for 7% of all R&D active enterprises.

Most recent figures available from the "Business in Ireland 2012 (PDF 3,329KB) " CSO report indicates that there are 481 enterprises in Ireland classified as large. Of these 481 enterprises nearly 30%, or 143 large enterprises, consider themselves as being R&D active. In contrast, there are over 2,400 enterprises classified as medium size enterprises in Ireland, with under 16% or 378 of these medium considered to be R&D active. There are over 182,600 enterprises in Ireland classified as small enterprises. 1,458 small enterprises considered themselves to be R&D active. This accounts for less than 1% of all small enterprises.  The vast majority (98%) of all small enterprises spent less than €2m on R&D activities compared to 79% of medium size enterprises and 57% of large enterprises.