Almost half of the multinationals based in Ireland expect to take on new staff in the coming twelve months, according to a survey released today.

The survey found that only 13 per cent of respondents expected to shed staff in the coming year.

The results compare positively with those of last year, when approximately the same percentage of respondents intended to shed staff as intended to take on new staff.

The NIB/Irish Management Institute (IMI) survey is based on responses from 110 multinationals, 81 per cent of which were foreign-owned multinationals.

The chief executive of the IMI, Dr Tom McCarthy, said the Irish operations were growing because they were increasing the size of their “mandates”, ie winning a greater role within their company’s global activities.

Sixty-one per cent of the companies surveyed had won new mandates from their organisations in the past twelve months.

Six out of ten of the companies surveyed expected turnover to grow in 2012 and 52 per cent said their growth plans were being hindered by a lack of suitable skills among the workforce, especially in engineering and IT.

Mr McCarthy said Irish operations won new mandates by succeeding with the mandates they had, and by the managers of the Irish operations developing relationships within their companies global networks.

NIB chief economist Ronnie O’Toole said Ireland was good at attracting skilled immigrants but that this was not in itself a solution to the skills needs of the multinational sector.