Ireland is largest net exporter of pharmaceuticals, valued at €55 billion, accounting for 50% of exports – Perry

Importance of Pharma Sector to Ireland

As you will all be aware, the pharmaceutical industry is hugely significant to the Irish economy:

• Ireland is the world’s largest net exporter of pharmaceuticals with exports valued at €55 billion, accounting for 50% of exports.
• 9 of the top 10 Pharmaceutical and 15 of the top 25 Medical Technology companies have significant operations in Ireland.
• The industry contributes total tax receipts of €3billion annually to the Irish economy.

Ireland has an enviable history of success in the pharmaceutical field, attracting some of the world’s leading pharmaceutical companies to establish operations here. Ireland is also well recognised as a global hub for the Life Sciences Sector due to the presence of substantial operations of leading companies including Abbott, Amgen, Bristol-Myers-Squibb, Eli Lilly, GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, to name but a few.

Over the last 30 years, IDA Ireland has played its part in ensuring we became and remain the location of choice for these and other players in the industry. Our record is very impressive - Ireland is now the location of choice for many of the main players in the sector and this helps to encourage further growth and development, ensuring a positive future for the Sector.

The Government fully appreciates the contribution that FDI companies, such as those here today, make to our economy. For our part, we are aware of your needs and will strive to meet these by ensuring that there continues to be:

• A highly skilled workforce with an impressive track record;
• Strong local management and a solid reputation for industry-academia collaboration;
• A 12.5% corporate tax rate and a 25% Research and Development (R&D) tax credit;
• No stamp duty on Intellectual Property transfer in Ireland;
• Leading edge industry infrastructure, with IDA Ireland linking companies with excellent pre planned sites, a developed sub-supply and world class design consultants.

We also have a thriving indigenous sector which is highly innovative and dynamic. Irish companies are competing successfully in international markets throughout the world. This sector has been growing at an average of 13% per annum over the last four years with employment growing by 7% last year.

Ireland has shown that it has the competence to develop, manufacture, distribute and service patient centric solutions from devices to drugs, from managing information and controlling process quality to managing global supply chains.

We can be proud of the fact that the Wyeth development in Grangecastle, Dublin, which is part of the Pfizer Group, is one of the largest integrated biopharmaceutical campuses in the world and is the only facility in Europe to manufacture biopharmaceuticals, pharmaceuticals and vaccines in the same facility.

R&D and Innovation

We have, without any doubt, built up a very considerable base of research across the broad spectrum of higher education. There has been, and there will continue to be, simultaneous investment across disciplines to maintain this broad base of knowledge and capacity and in specific strategic areas of national opportunity, in order to build on this base.

All of this has served to support a comprehensive innovation ecosystem that is connecting research, teaching and enterprise support. It is imperative that such an ecosystem is designed to maximise the economic impact of research, thereby creating the innovators of the future and supporting new and existing industries.

Right across Government, there exists a real appreciation of the importance of continuing investment in Science, Technology and Innovation, including STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) awareness activities.

In the current economic climate, with fewer resources available, it is the right time to prioritise our investment right across the board - this is also very much the case in the domain of research.

We have been doing our own behind-the-scenes work in this regard. A Steering Group has been working assiduously to identify priority areas for future investment that will build on research strengths and which have the potential to deliver sustainable economic return through enterprise development, employment growth, job retention and tangible improvements to the quality of life.

Work on this is coming to fruition and my colleague, the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Mr Richard Bruton, recently received the final Research Prioritisation Report which he will be bringing to Government in the very near future. This report will set out a future pathway for our spending in Research, Development and Innovation in Ireland.

The Government’s development agencies - IDA, Enterprise Ireland, SFI and others - all have a key role to play in increasing the innovation capability of industry in Ireland by supporting in-house R&D programmes and catalysing linkages with academic institutions and the clinical community.

Innovation and internationalisation, while building on a platform of research excellence, is central to our strategy – one which promotes the development of Ireland as a true, knowledge-based economy.

The Government recently announced investments in Science, Technology and Innovation totalling more than €65m, including funding for three Industry-focussed Technology Centres. A number of additional Technology Centres will be developed over the coming months, including one in the area of “Drug Production Technologies”, which is of direct relevance to this audience.

Over the coming years, through investments in Innovation Fund Ireland, the State will partner with leading international VC’s to provide liquidity to support the growth of world-leading high technology companies in Ireland. The biopharma industry is certainly one of the principal sectors that will benefit from this initiative.

The Government is aware, as outlined in last week’s Jobs Strategy, that while the pharma industry has continued to grow, it does face considerable challenges:

• Impending expiry of patents, global over-capacity, significant R&D costs and a low pipeline for new products in the pharmaceutical sector;
• Downward pricing pressures from healthcare consumers- governments and insurers;
• Increased pressures to demonstrate efficacy of new products and value for money
• Against this global backdrop the sector in Ireland faces particular challenges:
• Costs need to continue to decline, in particular labour waste and energy charges;
• The skills gaps need to continue to be addressed;
• We need to address the fragmentation in Ireland’s supporting infrastructures for clinical R&D and innovation;
• The lack of engagement by the healthcare system with industry, particularly in relation to research, clinical trials and the development and related manufacturing of innovative healthcare products and services.

The Government is committed to supporting the industry in meeting and overcoming these challenges. Our Jobs Action Plan has identified a number of key actions to be undertaken during 2012 in respect of the Health/Lifesciences Sector. These include:

• Delivering a Health Innovation Hub to drive collaboration between the health system and commercial enterprises leading to the development and commercialisation of new healthcare technologies, products, services and start-ups emerging from within the health system and/or firms;
• Enacting a Health Information Bill to support conducive environment for health research in Ireland. This will streamline the ethics approval process for health research not governed by statutory regulation and EU law. The Bill will also provide a legal framework for the introduction of an individual patient identifier;
• Supporting the development of Ireland as a Global Centre of Excellence for the Medical Device industry by providing a local high-quality, wide-scope, responsive CE mark certification service.

I can assure you that the Government is committed to delivering on its commitments in the Plan.

I have no doubt that the pharma and life sciences sectors will be key to Ireland’s economic recovery and job creation efforts, offering high value-added employment opportunities.

I want to take this opportunity to thank you for your work, your commitment to providing well paid jobs and your ongoing engagement with Government. I have no doubt that by working together we can succeed in building on our achievements to date laying the foundations for the future success of our economy.

I wish this morning’s event every success.

Thank You.

ENDS