The Tangible Contribution of R&D Spending Foreign-Owned Plants to a Host Region: a Plant Level Study of the Irish Manufacturing Sector (1980-1996)

the other two categories. In terms of mean R&D spend and R&D intensity
(R&D spend as a percentage of sales) per plant, the North American
plants had a mean equal to three times that of the Asian-Pacific owned
plants and over twice that of the European contingent. Correspondingly the
North American plants had the highest mean number of R&D persons per
plant. Using this plant level analysis, North American plants appear to be
the most R&D-active of all foreign-owned plants.¹⁸

(Table 6)

Table 6 shows the equivalent data for 1993. In 1993, the number of
plants with ten or more employees was slightly lower at 686 plants, while
the percentage of those plants doing a minimum level of R&D increased to
over 24 per cent. The mean R&D spend per plant is £590,000 Irish
pounds, a real increase of 47.5 per cent over the equivalent 1986 value.
The mean number of R&D personnel in these plants increased fourfold
from a mean of 13 persons in 1986 to 62 persons in 1993.¹⁹ Overall the
percentage of plants with a formal R&D department increased to
approximately 15 per cent. The mean R&D intensity is 3.9 per cent,
similar to the 4 per cent reported in 1986. In summary, the percentage of
foreign-owned plants reporting R&D expenditure and the scale of that
expenditure has increased over the period.

Similar to the situation outlined in 1986, there are significant
differences when we distinguish plants by their nationality of ownership.

¹⁸ US R&D investment in Irish subsidiaries accounts for 5.6% of all US R&D investment in Europe.
The equivalent share of manufacturing turnover is 2.4%. Calculating R&D investment as a
percentage of turnover, the US plants invest a greater percentage of their turnover in R&D than in any
other European country (2.5%). The second highest plants are those in Germany which invest 2.0% of
their turnover in R&D. (OECD, 1998:99)

¹⁹ This measures the number of people who have some involvement in R&D activities without
accounting for the time with which they are involved. In other words, it does not measure full time
equivalents.

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