One way in which countries become wealthier is by picking a set of industries and somehow cultivating them. Sometimes this is very deliberate, other times it’s more bottoms up. China has electronics and electric cars. In the past, the US had cars, oil, steel and planes and today has software, gas and drugs - among others. Less well known are German robotics and high-value manufacturing, Israel’s cybersecurity sector, or Ireland’s pharma manufacturing and medical device industries, as well as the Irish tax-break-assisted tech sector. There are many other examples, old and new.
The passive exploitation of natural resources, however, is not the same as the deliberate embrace of new industries and technologies. How Asia Works describes some examples in East Asia: South Korea developed steel, shipbuilding and electronics industries. Taiwan became the great semiconductor center of our time, and China has done this for multiple sectors, from rare earths to electric cars. In Europe, we have French nuclear reactors and by awful necessity, Ukraine may emerge as a powerhouse of drone manufacturing. Airbus deserves some mention too, though it is a single - large - company as opposed to a successful local industry with many players.
What industries and shifts might Ireland embrace? An Irish industrial rebirth could employ hundreds of thousands, fund infrastructure and all sorts of goodness for the whole population, and give Ireland substantial leverage in international affairs. Seeding and growing an internationally competitive industry at home is not easy, and liable to go the way of offshore wind - an abortive program hamstrung by the government's refusal to license developments. It’s worth trying though! Some candidates below.
- Spaceport West
Build a spaceport in Belmullet. Allow rocket companies to build and launch rockets from there. Expand Knock Airport - 90 minutes away - and build a big road from there to the Spaceport. Space is going to be a huge industry and there are few places in the world that will allow rockets to launch, particularly in Europe, and players will be interested in launchpads outside mainland America. As a backup option, consider floating launchpads just off the coast.
- Cell and gene therapy manufacturing
There is a coming wave of expensive cell and gene therapies. Ireland already manufactures a good chunk of the world’s drugs, including most of the world’s botox - the world’s Botox Capital is 10 minutes from where I grew up. The new therapies are generally more complex to manufacture than small molecules, or at least industry is still figuring out how to manufacture them reliably and cheaply. We already manufacture many APIs and monoclonal antibodies in Ireland, so it seems like it should not be a stretch to expand to gene therapies and cell therapies.
- Chips!
We already have a number of large semi fabs in Ireland, including Intel Fabs 14, 24 and 34 in Leixlip, and Analog Devices in Limerick - I think they make CMOS sensors? Maybe some MEMS too. Would require clearer rules and facilitation of water and power use for fabs, given that they are large, resource-intensive facilities and companies will be reluctant to invest in building them if they are likely to get delayed by basic requirements.
Agriculture is already a huge part of Ireland. Genetic engineering is getting more and more sophisticated and may be used to create new varieties of produce and livestock. Creating, raising and testing these will be controversial. Ireland might create an area where testing, breeding and consumption of new species is allowed and encouraged.
We may be at a bit of a disadvantage here compared to Shenzhen, Ukraine and American manufacturing hubs, but we are an island nation with little defense capabilities. We could always ask our chums in London to do us a favor, but it would be preferable to have control over this. If we get good at it, there will be plenty of demand. We may even be a preferred vendor as a neutral country.
We need power, and the more energy we produce, the cheaper it becomes for households and for industry. If we produce a lot of excess power, it can enable manufacturing. We could allow and encourage deployment and construction of SMRs in Ireland, with some requirement to also manufacture them in Ireland.
Solar panels in space can generate electricity. Add microwave beams and this energy can be beamed to Earth. Longford is about 1,091 km2. If you covered Longford with rectenna, and deployed enough space-based solar, you would end up with about 289 TWh per year generated / captured at Longford. That’s nearly 10x Ireland’s annual electricity consumption (30 TWh).
There is a worldwide shortage of radioisotopes. As an island nation, Ireland might not be ideally situated to produce short-lived materials. Radioisotopes are critical to radioligand therapy, which is a fast-growing new field of medicine. The first such drug, Pluvicto, was approved in 2022 and there are many others in clinical trials. A phase 3 trial was recently paused due to radioisotope shortages. If Ireland allows development of nuclear reactors as neutron sources, or supports development of alternative neutron sources, we could become a radioisotope production & packager of choice for Europe, if not further afield. I am a little wary of this because a number of companies have started to tackle this problem in the past 10 - 20 years. We may be too late to the party.
We already have an edge in medical device manufacturing, mainly around Galway, producing exports worth ~€15B, or 7% of Irish exports. These are regulated, complex devices like stents, glucose monitors, pacemakers and the more mundane hip and knee implants - you’re going to need them someday. We could encourage medical device manufacturers to also run trials for devices in Ireland, and offer accelerated review, or make it easier for people to volunteer to take part in trials (even if the FDA and EMA are who companies really care about). In particular, diagnostics and treatments that make use of wearables (Whoop, Apple Watch etc) are beginning to receive approvals and could be facilitated somehow in Ireland. We might also consider targeting excellence in materials science for medical devices, or incorporating electronics and MEMS into medical devices.
We are in the early stages of engineering cells to produce non-therapeutic materials at industrial scale. Solugen is one of the pioneers here, producing a range of molecules that include catalysts, coatings, anti-corrosives. Think bio-derived chemicals engineered specifically for your application of choice, whether that be water treatment or a (maybe) cheaper, alternative source of vanilla. In a similar way to our existing pharma industry, we might encourage the construction of synbio plants and become a producer of choice for another class of exotic compounds in the 21st century.
Treatments to extend healthspan and lifespan - in humans and pets - are entering clinical trials. I don’t have a good handle on the full set of therapies, but they include small molecules, gene therapies, RNA-based treatments, senolytics and cell reprogramming. Create a special economic & regulatory zone for development and testing of longevity treatments. Call it Tír na nÓg, per Oisín Moran’s suggestion.