Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)

I propose to take Questions Nos. 8 and 41 together.

The latest available data from the Central Statistics Office, CSO, indicates that exports of medical and pharmaceutical products to the United States in the first quarter of this year decreased by €1.1 billion and that total exports of these products decreased by €772 million when compared to the corresponding period in 2011. A substantial part of the decline was due to a high value product coming off patent.

The expiry of the patent on products manufactured by Pfizer unfortunately resulted in the announcement of the loss of 177 positions in Cork this week. My thoughts are with the workers and their families. I have spoken to the company about the situation. These two quality plants in Cork will still employ over 500 people and will be adapting to achieve operational excellence and deliver competitive manufacturing for the company. The company has also confirmed that Ireland remains a key strategic location for it. Factoring in this decision, Pfizer will still employ almost 4,000 people in Ireland across eight locations. In September 2011, the company announced a €145 million investment in its Grange Castle site to develop a new site to expand the Irish manufacturing process for an invasive pneumococcal vaccine.

IDA Ireland has been working for many years to minimise the threat to jobs posed by products coming off patent and has been seeking to diversify Ireland's pharmaceutical base. Its strategy has been to win leading company investment and to diversify the breadth of operations over multi-product sites, including associated services and development of new compounds. Ireland has been enormously successful in attracting eight of the major global players and the world's No. 1 biotechnology company to manufacture from Ireland. IDA Ireland has focused, in particular, on biopharmaceuticals, which represent the next wave of opportunity in the industry, and has been successful in attracting leading companies with the result that Ireland has a globally leading biopharmaceutical cluster in the next generation of pharmaceutical products.

Employment in IDA companies in the pharmaceutical and health care services sector increased by approximately 1,400 in 2011. In the first six months of 2012 alone, Ireland has won five major investments in the pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical sectors with the capacity to create 1,175 new jobs. I have been assured by IDA Ireland that it will continue to seek to win new investments in the pharmaceutical industry and to win large scale investments in product development and capability to enable its existing client companies take on new product mandates.

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