190 Investments, 10,410 Jobs: IDA Ireland's First Half of 2026 Shows Ireland's FDI Model Is Holding Strong

The Numbers That Matter

IDA Ireland published its mid-year results for 2026 on 1 July, and the headline figures make for compelling reading. In the first six months of 2026, the agency secured 190 foreign direct investment projects, with commitments to create 10,410 jobs across the Irish economy. Of those 190 investments, 54 came from first-time investors — companies choosing Ireland for the first time, not simply expanding existing operations. And 98 of the 190 projects, representing 52% of the total, were won outside of Dublin, confirming that the agency's strategic focus on regional development is translating into genuine geographic spread of investment rather than continued concentration in the capital.

The results were published alongside IDA Ireland's Annual Report for 2025, which confirmed that last year was a record performance — 323 total investments approved with 18,249 jobs gained, delivered during what IDA CEO Michael Lohan described as "one of the most turbulent years from an international investment perspective." The H1 2026 trajectory, tracking at approximately the same rate as H1 2025, means Ireland is on course to match or exceed that record performance in what remains a genuinely competitive and unpredictable global FDI environment.

The Investments That Define the First Half

The headline investment announcements of H1 2026 give a clear picture of the sectors and ambitions driving Ireland's FDI story in the current cycle. Novo Nordisk committed €432 million to expand manufacturing capacity at its Athlone facility, adding a new tableting plant specifically to manufacture the oral Wegovy formulation for markets outside the United States — a bet on Ireland's ability to manufacture complex oral peptides at global commercial scale. Qualcomm invested €125 million to further develop its Cork site as a strategic AI pillar within its global chipmaking organisation — positioning Ireland as a core location in one of the world's most important semiconductor companies' AI architecture. OpenText, the Canadian technology group, committed €105 million and 400 new jobs across its Cork and Galway sites, focused specifically on agentic AI and sovereign cloud capability for Europe.

Boston Scientific announced a €75 million investment in its Galway facility, including the expansion of its R&D capabilities and a reinforcement of its role as a global centre for cardiovascular innovation — the kind of high-value, research-intensive commitment that represents the most embedded and durable form of FDI Ireland attracts. MongoDB announced a €74 million expansion of its Irish operations, creating approximately 200 new roles across Dublin and Cork in engineering, AI development and operational growth. Apple opened its new Hollyhill 5 building in Cork, in addition to its new Dublin office which opened in February 2026. Klaviyo opened its Engineering Hub in Dublin with 50% growth targeted for 2026. Prove, the US digital identity company, announced an Irish expansion with plans to invest more than $5 million and create 50 new jobs in Dublin.

Across these announcements, a consistent pattern emerges: Ireland is attracting not just manufacturing investment but R&D, AI, engineering and advanced technology investment of the kind that embeds more deeply, pays more highly, and proves more durable through economic cycles than purely production-oriented FDI.

The Strategy Behind the Performance

IDA Ireland's current five-year strategy, "Adapt Intelligently," was launched in 2022 and runs to 2026. IDA chairperson Feargal O'Rourke, commenting on the H1 2026 results, said the agency is now 18 months into the strategy and the results "signal that our plan is fit for purpose in what is an increasingly turbulent world." The strategy has three defining priorities: regional development, sustainable investment and deepening the economic impact of FDI around the country. The H1 2026 regional performance — 52% of investments outside Dublin — is among the strongest regional showings in the agency's recent history, reflecting a deliberate and sustained effort to use IDA's landbank, advance facilities and regional client engagement to direct investment into the country's second cities, towns and counties rather than allowing it to default toward Dublin.

The US continues to be Ireland's dominant source of FDI, accounting for between 60% and 65% of all investments won in H1 2026, according to CEO Michael Lohan. Europe and Asia Pacific follow in the rankings. The US dominance reflects the depth of the Ireland-US economic relationship — more than 1,000 US companies operate in Ireland, employing more than 218,000 people — but the geographic concentration of source markets is also one of the risk factors IDA is actively managing, given the sensitivity of the Ireland-US FDI relationship to US trade policy and regulatory decisions.

The Competitive Context: A More Difficult World

The backdrop against which Ireland's H1 2026 FDI performance was delivered deserves acknowledgment, because the results are more impressive when understood in context. The global FDI environment in 2026 is genuinely more competitive and more volatile than at any point in the previous decade. France announced €200 billion in data centre and manufacturing investment incentives. Germany committed €100 billion in a parallel programme. The United States' CHIPS and Science Act has directed significant domestic manufacturing investment. The EU itself has launched multiple strategic investment programmes under the Green Deal Industrial Plan and the European Chips Act. Every major economy that Ireland competes with for mobile FDI has significantly increased the incentive packages and strategic investment programmes available to attract the same pool of globally mobile capital that IDA is pursuing.

Against that backdrop, sustaining a record FDI performance in 2025 and tracking toward a similarly strong H1 2026 is a meaningful result. It reflects the durability of Ireland's underlying FDI proposition — which IDA and Lohan both consistently frame not as a single variable, like the 12.5% corporation tax rate, but as a combination of talent, regulatory stability, EU market access, sector depth, research infrastructure and language advantage that is genuinely difficult to replicate quickly.

The agency is also clear-eyed about the risks ahead. IDA's H1 2026 report flags that continued focus on competitiveness, infrastructure delivery and other key enabling conditions will be "critical to sustaining Ireland's FDI performance" — a direct acknowledgment that the domestic policy environment matters as much as the global pitch. Housing costs for foreign workers, data centre grid constraints, planning system delays and infrastructure delivery timelines have all featured in investor feedback during 2025 and 2026, and IDA has been active in presenting these concerns to government through the Department of Enterprise and the Government Trade Forum.

What the 57 R&D and Innovation Investments Signal

Among the 190 H1 2026 investments, 57 were specifically classified as R&D and Innovation investments — focused on next-generation technology, advanced research and development, enterprise AI and sovereign cloud. That figure, representing 30% of all investments won, is one of the more significant structural indicators in the H1 data. It suggests that the evolution of Ireland's FDI proposition — from manufacturing and services toward research, innovation and AI — is continuing to gather pace, and that the country's investment in research infrastructure through Science Foundation Ireland, the IDA's own R&D supports, and the university sector is producing measurable results in terms of the type and quality of investment being attracted.

The specific emphasis on enterprise AI and sovereign cloud in multiple H1 2026 announcements — OpenText, Qualcomm, MongoDB and others — reflects a broader global dynamic: the demand for trusted, regulated, European-jurisdiction AI infrastructure is growing rapidly, and Ireland is being chosen as the location of choice by a meaningful number of the companies building that infrastructure. IDA's "Adapt Intelligently" strategy positioned Ireland for exactly this opportunity when it was written in 2022, and the H1 2026 data suggests the positioning was well-judged.

The Bottom Line

190 investments and 10,410 jobs in the first six months of 2026 — delivered during a period of genuine global economic turbulence, against intensifying international competition, and with more than half of investments landing outside Dublin — is a result that demonstrates the continued resilience and relevance of Ireland's FDI model. The quality of what is being attracted, with R&D, AI and advanced manufacturing featuring prominently across the headline announcements, matters as much as the quantity. Ireland's FDI story in the first half of 2026 is not a story of a country resting on its reputation. It is a story of an agency and an ecosystem continuing to compete hard for the next generation of investment.