FOREIGN INDUSTRIAL EMPLOYMENT IN IRELAND, 1983-2006
Aug 20th, 2011 by Conor McCabe
[The figures above are taken from the Census of Industrial Production series, which is published by the Central Statistics Office. The series, in various guises, goes back to 1926. The numbers for foreign-owned industry, however, start in 1983. The National Library call numbers are : OPIE I/77 (yrs 1926 - 1978) ; OPIE U/112 (yrs 1979 to date).]
I spent last week going through the Census of Industrial Production reports, 1983 to 2006, in order to find out just how many jobs in Ireland are provided directly by foreign investment.
This graph is what I got.
Notice how there is virtually no change in foreign-based industrial employment from the early 1980s onwards - in fact, as a percentage of the workforce it has steadily declined since 1981.
The real growth in foreign investment in Ireland in the past twenty years has been in foreign-based equity firms setting up shop in the IFSC. It is Ireland as a tax haven for finance - the only tax haven of its kind within the eurozone - which the government is desperately trying to protect with its defence of corporation tax.
It has nothing to do with industrial growth and the national economy.
Do the statistics allow you to separate out employment in Irish firms that supply materials, components, services, etc., to foreign-owned firms?
I recall circa the mid or late 1980s that the IDA’s line at the time was that we should seek/see added value through supplying the incoming companies with more than the labour they needed.
No they don’t. The IDA in its 2010 annual report says that 100,000 people are employed indirectly because of FDI- however, it cites the Forfás annual employment survey 2010 for that figure, but no such figure exists in that report.
The IDA claims that FDIs spent around 10.4 billion on irish materials and services in 2009 - 1.8 billion on materials and 8.6 billion on services - but no further breakdown of what these services actually were is given. Accounting and banking may charge millions for their services, but those millions can relate to a relatively low number of people. The same goes with the figures for R&D, which are bolstered in Ireland because of the tax breaks available for R&D - accounting exercises for tax avoidance purposes. Michael Burke has covered this in detail on progressive economy.
Having said all that, the point I’m making here is that employment by way of industrial FDI has remained essentially static for almost 30 years. The argument usually put forward that growth in industrial FDI in the late 1980s led to the celtic tiger and jobs growth is pretty much baloney.
Crikey. One state agency cites another but the number is not in the other agency’s report. Wonder will the likes of the Irish Times explore the fictional official figures?