Today there are 153 multinationals with operations in the Mid-West, from a variety of industry sectors ranging from technology and life sciences to international financial services, engineering and customer support. As of mid-2025, these leading companies employ more than 27,000 people.
A testament to the Mid-West’s continued attractiveness to investors is how their operations within the region continue to grow. The positive sentiment is clear from a 2024 survey by the American Chamber of Commerce which found that 75% of its members in the region expected the number of employees in their organisation to increase over the following 12 months.
Connectivity across Ireland
The Mid-West’s connectivity, convenience and accessibility has also attracted new companies to the region. Its three counties, Limerick, Clare and Tipperary, are well connected to nearby counties and further afield.There is an excellent rail, road and bus infrastructure, with a high-quality interurban motorway network linking Limerick to other locations across Ireland. Galway and Cork to the north and south respectively are within easy reach by train or motorway, and we have found that many people commute to work in the Mid-West from outside the region. Shannon Foynes Port offers trade and transport services, facilities, and maritime supply chain solutions to many industries.
At the heart of the region, Shannon Airport offers full US customs pre-clearance facilities. There are flights from Shannon to New York all year around and to Chicago and Boston during the summer. Many IDA clients also tell us they find the region well placed for connecting to nearby locations in the UK and Europe.
Limerick city ranked second overall in the micro-city category for the third consecutive year in fDi Intelligence European Cities and Regions of the Future 2025 report. The city scored well for investment strategy and human capital and lifestyle, along with economic potential and business friendliness. The report noted that more than one-third of FDI projects in the Mid-West over the past five years have involved high-value R&D.
A thriving location for multinational investment
For example, General Motors’ centre in Limerick is not to manufacture cars but to explore technology and research and development into future mobility and collaborate with other companies and institutions in this emerging field. In the same field, Jaguar Land Rover has a software engineering centre in Shannon where it’s working on R&D relating to key components supporting connected cars, technologies for advanced driver assistance systems, and future automated driving features.One of the world’s leading semiconductor companies Analog Devices (ADI) has operated a significant manufacturing facility in Limerick for many years. In 2023, ADI announced an investment of €630 million to triple wafer production at the site and scale up its research capabilities.
ADI can trace its presence in Ireland back as far as 1976. Since then, its Irish base has become one of the company’s strategic centres and its European regional headquarters. The company employs over 1,800 people,mainly at the manufacturing, design, and R&D campus at the Raheen Business Park in Limerick, as well as offices in Cork and Dublin.
Sectoral strengths: medical technology
A testament to the region’s attractiveness is the presence of one of Boston Scientific’s strategic Irish operations. In Clonmel, the company manufactures implantable electronic medical devices such as pacemakers, defibrillators, and spinal cord stimulators.The site in county Tipperary has operated for more than two decades and today employs over 1,000 people. It also includes a centre of excellence for metal additives that are used in a range of electronic components for medical technology. The centre has highly specialised roles such as production, engineering, quality, supply chain and R&D functions.
The medtech company Stryker is one of the largest employers in the sector in Ireland, with 5,000 people across eight locations. It first came to Ireland in 1998, and in 2025, chose Limerick as its first Irish facility for a planned training centre of excellence model. Developed with the support of the government through IDA Ireland, this is a three-year training initiative designed to equip Stryker’s employees with the agility and skills in digital innovation, advanced automation, and sustainability which are needed for the rapidly evolving work environment.
Limerick was the chosen site for Regeneron to set up its first manufacturing operation outside the United States in 2013. The company scaled rapidly in the region from that point, and to date it has invested more than $1 billion in its operations in the Mid-West, which employs over 1,000 people in high-end specialist roles.
In 2024, Beckman Coulter Diagnostics invested €10 million at its diagnostics production facility in Tullow, east county Clare. There are 600 people employed there, with headcount almost doubling since 2018. Johnson & Johnson’s Vision Care subsidiary runs one of the world’s largest contact lens manufacturing plants in the region.
Cook Medical employs more than 800 people at its Limerick facility, which began back in 1996 as a manufacturing operation for its minimally invasive devices. Since then, the site evolved into including labelling and distribution, centralised customer support, and collaborative product development at an innovation centre that opened in 2013. The operation in Limerick provides 10% of Cook’s global manufacturing.
Financial services is another strong sector in the Mid-West. Ireland is a strategic location within Northern Trust’s global asset servicing business. The firm opened a small base in Limerick in 2007 and today, this is where the majority of its Irish staff are based: 1,400 out of a total 1,800-strong team. Meanwhile, companies like Fiserv and Waystone benefit from locating in less urban areas, giving a wider catchment of employees while benefiting from the city ecosystems nearby.
A culture of collaboration
One of the striking aspects for multinationals that set up in the Mid-West of Ireland is the spirit of collaboration they find. There’s an impressive willingness among local authorities, government agencies, education providers, local stakeholders, and businesses to solve problems together. Business leaders often share their experiences of getting started in the region with new arrivals, regardless of industry or potential competition.This cooperation also takes the form of practical support: for example, when a company recently arrived in the region and needed to set up quickly, another multinational shared surplus office furniture to help them fit out the office quickly and get established faster. Stories like this prove the collective spirit that has contributed to Ireland’s Mid-West region successfully attracting world-leading companies.
The collaborative ethos is also found in research centres like Digital Manufacturing Ireland which is located in Limerick’s National Technology Park. It takes an industry-led approach to solving challenges and driving competitiveness, focusing on improving manufacturing processes by adopting transformative digital technologies. Future Mobility Campus Ireland, based in Shannon, is a hub for researchers, academics, and industry to work on exploring innovation for international land and air mobility and transportation.
Investing in sustainability and skills
Many multinationals have been in the Mid-West for many years, and some are renewing their commitment by investing in sustainability projects. Zimmer Biomet manufactures joint replacements for knees, hips and shoulders at two Irish sites, one of which is in Shannon. It has also invested in initiatives to make its operations more resilient and sustainable by eliminating paper and embracing digital technology. Bijur Delimon Ireland has a longtime base in Ennis, county Clare and has benefited from digitalising its operations, leading to the ability to review performance by department in real time.Engineering has been a traditional strength for the Mid-West, with 45 companies located throughout the region including Lufthansa Technik and Daktronics, a globally recognised designer and manufacturer of electronic scoreboards, programmable displays and large-screen video systems. The company operates a state-of-the-art 3,500 sq m manufacturing facility in Ennistymon, County Clare, where it has been since the 1970s.
To continue the flow of skilled people into this important sector, Explore Engineering is an initiative jointly spearheaded by industry and locally based education and training providers. This is another sign of the region’s collaborative spirit, working together to produce talented graduates, technicians and apprentices for businesses based there.
A high-quality education system
On the subject of skills, a key ingredient in the region’s ‘secret sauce’ is its third-level education providers. Companies operating in the Mid-West frequently tell us this. The University of Limerick and Technological University Shannon provide high-quality graduates first and foremost and they also encourage collaboration and input from companies in terms of projects and course content. This openness to working together is not easily replicated elsewhere.The education sector is always looking at ways to innovate and produce skills the industry will need long into the future. One is the University of Limerick’s ISE (Immersive Software Engineering) programme, a new kind of computer science degree that gives students a combination of practical skills and theory. The software course takes inspiration from medical school residencies where trainees learn by doing and receive mentoring. With the ISE degree, participants spend half their time in paid internships at world-leading companies, gaining valuable real-world experience in the process, and the other half studying with top-class lecturers and researchers.
There is a similar initiative in the biotech field: iBio is a partnership between two major international companies with operations in the Mid-West, Eli Lilly and Analog Devices. They have teamed up with UL to develop an immersive programme to nurture students into becoming leaders in the biotech space. Together with future partners across the biopharma sector, the companies will contribute through consulting on curriculum design, as well as participating as guest contributors and hosting students on industry residencies.
As well as education providers meeting the technical skills needs of employers in the region, the Mid-West also offers companies a wide range of language skills thanks to a diverse population that now lives in the region. This multilingual ability enables projects like Uber’s centre of excellence in Limerick, which has been a major support hub for the company’s operations in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa since 2015. Similarly, the US telecommunications company Verizon set up a centre of excellence in the city in 2024, with scope to grow to 400 skilled roles.
A high quality of life is another key part of the Mid-West’s attraction for international investors, offering lifestyle, landscape, culture, sport, and entertainment. This enables companies in the region to attract people from other parts of Ireland or continental Europe.
With a track record of proven success in attracting overseas investment, infrastructure, talent, and collaboration, the Mid-West has it all.