Nearly 50% of multinationals expect to increase staff next year

Nearly half of the multinationals operating here expect to increase staff in the next 12 months, while 13% of firms surveyed expected to decrease their employment numbers.

However, 52% of multinationals say their growth plans are being hindered by a lack of suitable skills, in a survey of companies from the Irish Management Institute and National Irish Bank.

Despite some improvement on recent years, 70% say labour costs in Ireland are higher than in comparable locations.

The UK was the single most important source of competition for Irish subsidiaries (21%) followed by China (14%), the United States (13%) and India (11%).

The survey findings show that the strategic importance of Irish operations to their parent companies is very high in 62% of the companies surveyed.