For sixty-five years, Ireland's biopharma story has been written largely from the outside in. It began with Pfizer setting up a small molecule facility in Ringaskiddy in the early 1960s, followed by Merck in Ballydine, and over the decades that followed it grew — steadily, then rapidly, then explosively — into one of the most remarkable FDI success stories in modern European economic history.
Today, Ireland exports over €139 billion worth of pharmaceutical, biopharmaceutical and chemical products every year, making it the third-largest pharmaceutical exporter in the world. Nineteen of the world's top twenty pharmaceutical companies have a presence here. Twenty-five large-scale biologics facilities operate on the island. Over 50,000 people are directly employed in the sector, and more than 80,000 when the indirect ecosystem is counted.
It is, by any measure, a success story. But BioPharmaChem Ireland — the Ibec group that represents over 90 companies across the biopharma and chemical sectors — has been asking a pointed question for some time now: whose success story is it? And what would it look like if Ireland could build a parallel indigenous pharmaceutical and biotech sector that grows, scales, and exports medicines developed and owned by Irish-founded companies, rather than simply manufacturing medicines developed elsewhere? The answer to that question is the document launched at BioPharmaChem Impact in May 2026 under the name "Together, for Others" — the BioPharmaChem Ireland Indigenous Sector Strategy.
The Gap the Strategy Is Designed to Close
The central diagnosis of the "Together, for Others" strategy is both precise and striking. Despite Ireland's world-class pharmaceutical manufacturing reputation, its indigenous biopharmaceutical sector faces a structural funding disadvantage that has prevented it from scaling in the way that comparable ecosystems in Boston, Basel or Cambridge have managed. The strategy identifies a €1.1 billion equity financing gap — the difference between the capital that high-potential Irish life sciences firms need to develop and commercialise their products and the capital currently available to them through Irish and European funding channels.
The consequence of that gap is a pattern that those in the sector know well: Irish researchers and entrepreneurs with genuinely promising drug candidates, medtech innovations or biotech platforms are forced to seek early investment from US or European venture capital funds, which typically require the company to relocate overseas as a condition of the investment. Ireland's research institutions produce the intellectual property. The commercial value flows out of the country. This is the problem the strategy is designed to address — not by competing with the multinational FDI that has made Ireland's sector what it is, but by building an indigenous tier that can operate and scale alongside it.
What 'Together, for Others' Actually Proposes
The strategy takes its name from a dual ambition: doing more for Irish patients who deserve access to innovative medicines developed at home, and contributing more to global healthcare through Irish-originated research and manufacturing. Its practical content addresses four interconnected challenges that indigenous Irish biopharma companies consistently identify as structural barriers to growth.
The first is the equity financing gap itself. The strategy calls for a coordinated response from government, Enterprise Ireland and the Irish venture capital community to build the funding infrastructure that would allow Irish life sciences companies to raise the capital they need at each stage of development without being forced to relocate or dilute their Irish ownership base at critical growth inflection points.
The second is the talent challenge. Ireland's pharmaceutical manufacturing sector, dominated by multinationals paying premium compensation, creates what one analysis describes as a gravitational pull that draws available talent away from indigenous startups and toward larger, better-resourced employers. For an Irish biotech company trying to hire a specialist bioprocessing engineer or a regulatory affairs director, the competition from Pfizer, Lilly and MSD operating in the same labour market is a genuine structural constraint, not a temporary recruitment difficulty. The strategy advocates for targeted skills supports and workforce development programmes specifically calibrated to the capacity of indigenous companies, rather than one-size-fits-all sector-wide measures designed around the needs of large multinationals.
The third is research commercialisation. Ireland's universities and research institutions — including SSPC, the Science Foundation Ireland Research Centre for Pharmaceuticals — have produced research of genuine global standing, with SSPC alone delivering over €1.3 billion in economic impact since 2008 and attracting €3.7 billion in FDI to Ireland. But the pathway from research output to commercial product, through clinical development, regulatory approval and manufacturing scale-up, remains much more clearly navigated by established multinationals than by indigenous startups working with the same science. The strategy calls for dedicated supports to help Irish-founded companies navigate that pathway without losing their Irish base in the process. One concrete example already in motion: APC-VLE Ltd, co-founded by an SSPC alumnus, which began as a two-person startup and is now investing €100 million in a new Medicine Accelerator, creating 300 new roles. That is the model the strategy wants to replicate at scale.
The fourth area is market access and international scale-up. Enterprise Ireland's Ambition 2030 strategy aims to have 150 Irish companies with market capitalisations of more than €1 billion by the end of the decade, with the life sciences sector expected to be a significant contributor to that number. Reaching that scale from an Irish base requires support not just at the early seed and series A stage, but at the critical mid-growth phase where companies need to build commercial teams in international markets, establish manufacturing partnerships and navigate the regulatory requirements of the US FDA and the EMA simultaneously.
The Wider Context: Why This Strategy Matters Now
The launch of the "Together, for Others" strategy at BioPharmaChem Impact in May 2026 comes at a moment when the external environment is pushing Ireland's pharmaceutical sector toward exactly the kind of resilience that a stronger indigenous tier would provide. The US tariff environment under the current administration has introduced new uncertainty into the cost structures of multinational pharma companies with supply chains spanning multiple continents, and while Irish-manufactured pharmaceuticals are currently not subject to tariffs, the administration has signalled interest in extending coverage to pharmaceutical products — a development that would have significant implications for a sector as export-concentrated as Ireland's.
In that context, building an indigenous tier is not just commercially attractive — it is strategically prudent. A pharmaceutical sector with a stronger domestic ownership base is less exposed to the corporate restructuring decisions of multinationals made in New York or New Jersey boardrooms, and more directly aligned with Ireland's own long-term economic and healthcare interests. The National Life Sciences Strategy, expected to be published by June 2026 ahead of Ireland's EU Council Presidency, is the government's parallel commitment to exactly the same set of ambitions — a whole-of-government framework designed to align Department of Health, Department of Enterprise, Enterprise Ireland, IDA Ireland and the research funding agencies behind a shared vision for what Ireland's life sciences sector could look like by 2030 and beyond.
Dr Sinead Keogh, Head of Sectors at Ibec and Director of BioPharmaChem Ireland, has been consistent in articulating both the ambition and the urgency. "We also want to create more indigenous businesses with global aspirations," she has said. "The ethos of developing a balanced system where Irish-owned companies can compete on an equal basis with multinationals globally is one that we should also aim for in biopharma and biotech." At BioPharmaChem Impact 2026, with 430 delegates, a record export performance of €139 billion as the backdrop, and the EU Presidency approaching, the moment for that ambition to move from aspiration to funded, structured delivery has arguably never been clearer.
The Bottom Line
Ireland has spent sixty-five years becoming the world's third-largest pharmaceutical exporter by building an ecosystem that multinationals trust and choose. "Together, for Others" is BioPharmaChem Ireland's strategic argument for why the next phase of that story should include a parallel indigenous tier — Irish-founded, Irish-owned pharmaceutical and biotech companies developing, manufacturing and exporting medicines from an Irish base. Closing the €1.1 billion equity financing gap that currently pushes high-potential Irish companies out of the country is the first and most critical step in making that happen.