At first glance, Ringaskiddy looks like any other quiet village on Ireland’s south coast. But it has one claim to fame: the sprawling Pfizer campus that became ground zero of the country’s lucrative pharmaceutical production industry.
The US multinational decided in 1969 to establish its first Irish plant in what had been a fishing village on the edge of Cork Harbour, investing $10bn there and in three other locations across the country in the decades since.
Rivals followed Pfizer’s lead, turning County Cork — and Ireland as a whole — into a major hub for US drugs groups. A similar story has played out in tech, with US companies such as Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Apple setting up European headquarters or large operations in the country. The investment from US multinationals into two of Ireland’s champion industries has delivered thousands of jobs, colossal corporation tax receipts and, in the past few years, breathtaking budget surpluses.