Category: In The News

This report, which presents the findings of the eighth Eurostudent survey of over 20,000 higher education students in Ireland, provides a wealth of internationally comparable demographic, economic and social data.  This data provides insights into the quality of life of the increasingly diverse student population in Irish higher education. The full report, conducted by Insight Statistical Consulting for the Higher Education Authority, is available for download here.

Eurostudent is a network of researchers and data collectors, representative of national ministries and other stakeholders who have joined forces to examine the social and economic conditions of student life in higher education systems in Europe.

The main aim of the Eurostudent project is to collate comparable data from 30 countries on the social dimension of European higher education. Eurostudent is a network of researchers and data collectors, representative of national ministries and other stakeholders who have joined forces to examine the social and economic conditions of student life in higher education systems in Europe

The Irish study is overseen by the HEA on behalf of the Department and was undertaken by Insight Statistical Consulting. This publication will include information collated from higher education institutes on the social dimension of higher education in Ireland as provided by a survey completed by students.

It focuses on the socio-economic background and on the living conditions of students.  It also investigates other interesting aspects of student life such as international mobility and employment during term-time.

This report provides results from over 20,000 students attending higher education institutions in Ireland and provides insightful information relating to the demographic profile of students, course characteristic, entry routes, accommodation, employment and other relevant issues on student life. The information collated helps us to comprehend more succinctly the quality of life of the increasingly diverse student population in Irish higher education and how this influences their learning experience.

The findings cover the effects of the Covid-19 Pandemic in addition to traditional areas such as demographics, course characteristics, disability, college entry route, income and expenditure, accommodation, employment and student.

In research conducted by Insight Statistical Consulting for the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, 32,426 new jobs were created by multinational companies with operations in Ireland over the past year, despite difficult economic conditions globally – the highest level of annual growth ever.

When jobs lost during the same period are taken into account, the net number of new foreign direct investment related roles added over the last 12 months totalled 24,019.

This is according to IDA Ireland as it launched its annual results for 2022 today.

It means there are now a total of 301,475 people working for foreign multinationals here, up 9% on last year.

This is the highest level on record and the first time that the 300,000 mark has been breached.

“The challenging and volatile international environment that we saw in 2021 escalated this year,” said Mary Buckley, interim chief executive at IDA Ireland.

“In light of that, these annual results are most encouraging and show that investors’ commitment to Ireland remains strong and Ireland’s value proposition as a place to do business remains a compelling one,” Ms Buckley said.

242 individual investments were won over the period, with 103 of those first time investors in Ireland.

Just over half – some 127 – of the investments went to regional locations.

All regions benefited, with the mid-east recording the highest level of increase, up 13.1%.

In the midlands, FDI employment rose 10.5%, and the same in Dublin.

In sectoral terms, both information and communication services and business, financial and other services rose 9%.

Modern manufacturing increased 8% and traditional manufacturing by 5.6%.

Some of the biggest announcements over the year included a further €12 billion investment by Intel in its campus in Kildare, plans by Apple for a new building in Cork and TikiTok’s promise to create 1,000 new roles.

The job numbers released today do not, however, include the impact of recent job losses in the tech sector as the IDA’s employment survey was completed at the end of October, before some of those announcements were made,

Despite the worsening global economic outlook, the IDA said the pipeline for the first half of next year remains positive.

However, it has warned that for the second 6 months of 2023 the outlook is more uncertain.

It said it continued to monitor the situation in the global tech sector and is actively engaging with tech investors here.

“Ireland has not been immune to the challenges created by global events of recent months and we expect those to continue into 2023,” Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment Leo Varadkar said.

“However, these figures show that Ireland continues to be seen as a location of choice for new investors and long-established companies who chose to reinvest in substantial expansions of their operations here,” he said.

Submission to the AKTS is from Ireland’s Higher Education Institutes which in 2021 comprised eight Universities, three Technological Universities, seven Institutes of Technology and two Colleges. Teagasc, the Marine Institute and Irish Manufacturing Research (IMR) also contribute.

Insight Statistical Consulting (Insight) were commissioned to capture the data, validate and produce the outputs from which the published report is generated.

Executive Summary

Research projects between companies and RPOs are of significant importance in the area of RD&I activity. In 2021 there were 1,339 new R&D agreements signed with companies to commence new research projects. At year end there were 1,780 research projects live across all RPOs. There were a total of 2,121 new contracts with industry in 2021 which include 782 consultancy agreements.

347 Collaborative Research Agreements and 210 Consultancy Agreements were signed with Non-commercial entities. The total number of R&D Agreements and Consultancy Agreements signed in 2021 with industry and non-commercial entities totalled 2,678. The majority of intellectual property licences, options and assignments to companies were for patents and software at 30% and 22% respectively.

Over the period 2017-2021 the total number of spin-out companies formed was 139, an average of 28 per year. In 2021, 32 new spin-outs were created. Five companies previously spun out from an RPO were acquired by or merged with another company. As of December 2021, there were 143 Active Spin-out companies (3+ years post formation) and these companies employ at least 1,218 people.

Research expenditure for the 23 RPOs totalled €672m in 2021 with 8.6% (€57.6m) of this being derived from Industry. Revenue return to RPOs from commercialisation activities with industry totalled approximately €143m. 89% of this came from research agreements (research collaborations + Innovation Vouchers) and almost 3% from consultancy services. The remaining revenue return came from license, equity and dividend and use of facilities and equipment.

Access to the full report is available here.