Workers in the IT sector have the highest average earnings of workers in Ireland, earning a combined €8.5bn in 2019, according to figures from the Central Statistics Office (CSO).
Some 90,775 people were employed in the industry across 5,178 companies three years ago, over 4,400 of which were domestic companies, with those companies making up nearly half (40,746) of the 90,766 people employed in the sector while accounting for just €2bn or 23.5% of earnings.
Large companies of more than 250 employees had a gross value added per worker of €704,193, more than 10x that of SMEs, and around 63% of those employed in the industry had an undergraduate degree or higher, putting IT workers among the most highly educated in the Irish economy.
Across the industry, the CSO reported that less than a third (32%) of workers in IT were women, and that women make up only 5% of all telecommunication engineers in Ireland.
"Looking at the contribution to gross domestic product (GDP) by firms in this ICT value chain analysis, released today, the dominance of foreign-owned multinational corporations (MNEs) is evident," said Michael Connolly, senior statistician at the CSO.
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"The same story emerges from a review of capital investment in the sector, where Intellectual Property (IP) assets owned by these MNEs also predominates. But critically, when we consider the human capital contribution in the value chain, we see that almost half of the highly educated workforce are employed by Irish firms.
"These domestic firms are active in export markets with almost half of their IT production being exported (€1.9bn). Interestingly, this value chain analysis also presents evidence of knowledge sharing or spill-overs of expertise between large MNEs and domestic firms with nearly 9,000 workers (10% of ICT employment) changing jobs in 2019 but remaining in the ICT sector."
Some €117bn or 91% of the €128bn total output of the IT sector in 2019 was exported, and total investment in the industry was €103, or 10% of all capital assets in Ireland. In all, Ireland consumed €8bn worth of IT products in 2019 -- €3.3bn by households; €4.7bn by firms.
Connolly said that the sector's productivity was driven by large capital assets that foreign-owned multinationals hold in Ireland, while the value of said companies' imports and exports amounted to a quarter of GDP for the country as a whole.
"The large foreign multinational ICT companies are making large profits here, most of which flow out to their owners, but they paid almost €4bn in taxes in 2019 before their profits flowed out," he explained.
"As well as their wages paid, they also show some ‘spill over’ of expertise with domestic firms. Analysis also shows that around 20% of people who change jobs in the ICT sector go between the foreign multinationals and domestic enterprises."
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