Ireland's Innovation Index · 2025
Investment remained positive; cost was the dominant constraint.
Seventy-one per cent expected research, development and innovation (RDI) investment to rise over the following three years. Yet almost two-thirds selected limited budget or high cost as a barrier to innovation.
Who responded
Respondent profile.
Company size
The detailed chart reports 38% large organisations and 62% across medium, small, micro and HPSU categories.
Ownership
The report’s summary says 62% Irish-owned and 38% foreign-owned. Its detailed categories identify 19% US-owned and 13% other foreign- owned, leaving 6 percentage points unexplained.
Largest sectors
Software/ICT 19%, engineering/technology 19%, and medical and health 14%.
Finding 1 · Investment
A majority had increased RDI spend and expected further growth.
Sixty-five per cent reported higher spend over the previous three years and 71% expected higher spend over the next three. SMEs were more optimistic about future investment than large companies.
View the data table
| Category | Value |
|---|---|
| Past three years · increased | 65% |
| Next three years · expect increase | 71% |
| SMEs expecting an increase | 75% |
| Large companies expecting an increase | 65% |
Separate retrospective and forward-looking questions. The size split applies only to the future question. Source — 2025 report, pp.16–17
Finding 2 · Priorities
New development and improvement dominated the agenda.
Respondents prioritised new products, processes or services, improving what they already offered and deploying new technologies. AI is deliberately not headlined here because the source contains irreconcilable labels and values.
View the data table
| Category | Value |
|---|---|
| New product/process/service | 81% |
| Improve existing products/services | 77% |
| Develop/deploy new technologies | 62% |
| Cost reduction/efficiency | 52% |
| Digitisation/process automation | 47% |
Multi-select question; exact valid base not published. Source — 2025 report, pp.10–13
Finding 3 · Delivery barriers
Cost remained the largest innovation constraint.
Limited budget or perceived high cost was selected by almost two- thirds. Time, recruitment, skills and speed formed a second tier of barriers.
View the data table
| Category | Value |
|---|---|
| Limited budget / high cost | 64% |
| Time to plan and administer | 41% |
| Recruitment of key talent | 33% |
| Internal RDI skills gap | 32% |
| Inability to move fast enough | 31% |
Multi-select question; exact valid base not published. Source — 2025 report, p.13
Finding 4 · Innovation management
Only one in five reported a structured innovation-management process.
The results showed a wide maturity spread: from no process, through ad-hoc and transitional practice, to a structured process such as ISO 56001.
View the data table
| Category | Value |
|---|---|
| No structured process | 24% |
| Ad-hoc process | 30% |
| Transitioning to structured | 24% |
| Structured process | 21% |
Values total 99% because of rounding. ‘Structured’ is a respondent category, not evidence of certification. Source — 2025 report, pp.14–15
Finding 5 · Supports
Support was associated with activity, but access still consumed capacity.
Respondents said supports allowed more R&D and employment. At the same time, administrative work around drawdown or a tax-credit claim remained the most common access barrier.
View the data table
| Category | Value |
|---|---|
| Allowed more R&D | 61% |
| Supported more employment | 47% |
| Encouraged internal investment | 40% |
| Drawdown / RDTC administration barrier | 39% |
| Grant application barrier | 30% |
Multi-select questions. The first three are respondent-attributed effects; the final two are access barriers. Source — 2025 report, pp.19–21
Finding 6 · International position
The multinational subgroup described both competitiveness and dependence.
Fifty-three per cent rated Ireland’s supports equally or more favourably than other locations. A majority said no more than 10% of their Irish R&D would remain without the credit.
View the data table
| Category | Value |
|---|---|
| Supports equal or favourable | 53% |
| No more than 10% of R&D without RDTC | 56% |
| No more than half without RDTC | 82% |
Multinational subgroup; exact question-level valid bases are not published. Source — 2025 report, pp.22–23
Finding 7 · Green innovation
Three quarters supported a higher rate for green R&D.
Seventy-six per cent said a 50% rate would incentivise increased R&D in green and sustainable technologies. This measures a hypothetical response, not realised activity.
View the data table
| Category | Value |
|---|---|
| Yes | 76% |
| No | 20% |
| Unsure | 4% |
Exact valid base not published. Source — 2025 report, p.24
What IRDG and KPMG asked for
The 2025 recommendations, as published.
Reproduced as published. Source — 2025 report, p.42. This page preserves the recommendations as published in 2025. Any later policy or legal status must be dated and checked against current official guidance rather than rewritten into the historical record.
Raise national R&D investment
Raise government R&D expenditure to 0.8% of gross national income (GNI) and target combined gross expenditure on R&D (GERD) of 2.5% of GNI within three years.
Recommendation 1Address payment and intervention delays
Accelerate payments and streamline R&D Tax Credit interventions.
Recommendation 2Increase the R&D Tax Credit rate
Increase the rate from 30% to 35%, as the report proposed at publication.
Recommendation 3Create a green R&D rate
Introduce a 50% credit rate for qualifying green technologies and increase the awareness, accessibility and amount of green RDI grant aid.
Recommendation 4Establish an Innovation Tax Credit
Create a separate incentive supporting qualifying product and process innovation.
Recommendation 5Simplify qualifying expenditure
Clarify the definition and treatment of overhead and indirect costs.
Recommendation 6Modernise outsourcing rules
Increase outsourcing limits and permit appropriate connected-company outsourcing.
Recommendation 7Broaden building expenditure
Extend qualifying R&D building expenditure beyond industrial buildings.
Recommendation 8IRDG's reading of it
What the 2025 evidence meant.
High investment intent sat alongside uneven innovation-management maturity, internal capacity constraints and the cost of delivery. This is IRDG interpretation, shown separately from the survey findings above.
Data notes and corrections
What this edition does and does not establish.
Published so that anyone reusing these figures knows their limits. Where the report contradicts itself, the contradiction is recorded rather than resolved silently.
Note 1
No fully completed-response count or most question-level valid bases are published.
Note 2
The company-size chart says 38% large and 62% other; the executive summary says 37% and 63%. This page uses the detailed chart.
Note 3
The ownership summary says 62% Irish-owned and 38% foreign-owned, while the detailed US and other-foreign categories total 32%. The remaining 6 percentage points are not explained in the report.
Note 4
The source’s AI priority data is internally inconsistent: 49% appears in Figure 9 and the executive summary, while 46% appears in narrative and a second overlapping category. No 2025 AI percentage is headlined here pending raw-data confirmation.
Note 5
The downloadable 2025 PDF is not tagged for screen readers. The HTML page is the accessible summary; the archival PDF should be remediated before permanent publication.
Citation
IRDG and KPMG (2025), Ireland’s Innovation Index 2025, Dublin: Industry Research & Development Group.
Report
Open the 2025 report — PDF, 4.0 MB, 25 pages. This PDF is NOT tagged for screen readers; this page is the accessible summary and the archival PDF is scheduled for remediation.
The publication
Read the 2025 report in full.
Everything on this page is drawn from the published report — 556 responses, fieldwork March to April 2025. The PDF carries the full charts, the question wording and the methodology note.
Ireland's Innovation Index is produced by IRDG with KPMG. This is the third edition.
Data, corrections and media
Spotted something wrong, or need the underlying data?
If a figure here does not match your copy of the report, tell us and we will check it and publish a correction. We also take media and data-reuse requests through the same route.