Pfizer likely to add more Irish jobs as pharma taps Covid vaccine boom                

A pedestrian walk past Pfizer world headquarters in New York yesterday. File Picture: PA

Pfizer may likely add more Irish jobs on top of the 300 new posts the US pharmaceutical giant announced in Cork and Leinster last week, as the country benefits indirectly from the positive early results of the trial of its Covid-19 vaccine.

A Pfizer laboratory in Grange Castle in Dublin is playing a key part in assessing the quality of the manufacturing of the potential vaccine in Europe which Pfizer is developing with its partner BioNTech of Germany. 

The Irish facility is receiving batches of the vaccine candidate from Pfizer's manufacturing plant in Puurs near Antwerp in Belgium as part of the quality control process for developing the shot. Pfizer has three other sites, in the US, which are involved in manufacturing the potential vaccine.    

After exploratory talks in recent weeks on behalf of member states, the EU is set to announce a deal on the number of doses it will pre-order from Pfizer and BioNTech.

Amid the booming worldwide demand for the pharma giants, it is anticipated that Pfizer will likely add more jobs in Ireland on top of the jobs it announced last week.

Under that investment, Pfizer has pledged to inject €300m in its Irish operations, supporting the development of its existing manufacturing site in Ringaskiddy, alongside sites in Dublin and Kildare, to bring its workforce in Ireland to 4,000 people.

Part of the investment will also include the initial stage of a project to construct a development facility on the Ringaskiddy site to manufacture pharmaceutical compounds for Pfizer’s clinical trials globally.

Pfizer employs 800 people in Ringaskiddy, 1,700 people at Grange Castle, 950 at Newbridge in Co Kildare, and 400 people in Ringsend in Dublin. With Mylan, Pfizer has advanced plans to combine its Upjohn business under the Viatris name. That business employs around 200 people here.