A major US pharmaceutical company is to invest £300 million in its Dublin operations and create an extra 500 jobs. Bristol-Myers Squibb said yesterday it would expand its Irish research and development facilities at Swords - creating an additional 100 jobs - and build a new factory near Mulhuddart, where 400 will be employed.
The Tanaiste, Ms Harney, who travelled with IDA Ireland executives to the company's New York headquarters to help clinch the investment, said the move represented an important endorsement of Ireland as Europe's leading location for pharmaceutical firms.
"Nine out of the world's top ten pharmaceutical companies have substantial manufacturing facilities in Ireland," she added. "In total, the sector exports around £5 billion of products annually, making it one of the most important sectors in the Irish economy."
Early pharmaceutical investments in the Republic were mainly in fine chemical plants, producing active ingredients in bulk. In more recent years, the IDA has successfully attracted finished product pharmaceutical companies, and much of the industry is now technologically advanced. Some 22 plants are approved by the United States' Food and Drug Administration (FDA), regarded as having some of the most stringent safety rules in the world.
Many have added on-site development centres, with some engaged in collaborative research with Irish universities.
Bristol-Myers Squibb is an elephantine, multi-national firm, making pharmaceuticals, consumer products, nutritional products and medical devices. Last year it had sales of $16.7 billion (£11.8 billion), and net profits of $3.2 billion (£2.3 billion). Pharmaceuticals represented almost 60 per cent of its business and 71 per cent of profits.
The company already employs 320 people at its subsidiary, Swords Laboratories. In addition, it produces pharmaceutical intermediates, finished products and conducts clinical trial quantities of new drugs from its own research and development (R&D) unit.
Under the investment, the R&D centre is to be expanded, with 100 new jobs. Ms Harney said yesterday that the unit is already considered successful, and developed an innovative process for the commercial and environmentally sustainable production of the anticancer drug, Taxol.
"The high calibre of management and staff already employed at their Irish operation was a major factor in the company's decision to expand Dublin," she added.
Pending approval after an Environmental Impact Study, the company will build a new factory at Cruiserath, near Mulhuddart, to the west of the capital. The new facility will form part of a 100 acre site being acquired from IDA Ireland.
The factory will become a supply centre for the raw materials used to make drugs elsewhere in the world. Because of the precision required in such work, most of the 400 employees will be highly-skilled graduates.
"This is high end, capital intensive business," one industry analyst explained last night. "There's no room for mistakes. You're working to FDA standards and they carry out checks, completely unannounced, at any moment, day or night."
