| Business Expenditure on Research and Development (R&D) 2015-20201 | |||||
| €'000 | |||||
| 2015 | 2017 | 20181 | 2019 | 20201 | |
| Current Expenditure | 2,075,955 | 2,492,173 | 2,541,566 | 2,700,588 | 2,536,714 |
| Capital Expenditure | 157,102 | 278,041 | 236,182 | 555,707 | 854,451 |
| Total Expenditure | 2,233,057 | 2,770,214 | 2,777,748 | 3,256,295 | 3,391,165 |
| of which; Irish Spend | 809,662 | 858,849 | 967,088 | 962,986 | 977,845 |
| Foreign Spend | 1,423,395 | 1,911,365 | 1,810,659 | 2,293,309 | 2,413,320 |
| 1Expenditure for 2018 and 2020 estimated. | |||||
Results from the 2019-2020 Business Expenditure on Research and Development survey show that almost €3.26bn was spent on Research and Development (R&D) activities by enterprises in Ireland in 2019. This represents an increase of 17.5% compared with actual expenditure in 2017. Current expenditure, which comprises of labour costs and other current costs, accounted for 82.9% of all expenditure in 2019, with capital expenditure accounting for the remaining 17.1% or €555.7m of total expenditure.
Irish-owned enterprises reported an increase in R&D spend of 12.1% or €104.1m, up from €858.8m in 2017 to €963.0m in 2019.
Enterprises were also asked to estimate their R&D expenditure for 2020. These estimates indicated an R&D expenditure of €3.39bn in 2020, with a split of 74.8% and 25.2% between current and capital expenditure respectively. See Headline Table and Figure 1.
