St Patrick’s Day is a national holiday with extraordinary international appeal.
While 17 March is celebrated with great fervour at home (and Dublin’s St Patrick’s Festival is worth an estimated €122m annually to the Irish economy), ‘the real impact of St Patrick’s Day can be seen through the international lens’, says Assumpta Harvey, head of the School of Global Business at TU Dublin. ‘Celebrating our culture and heritage abroad promotes Ireland as an attractive destination for travel and business.’
This year the taoiseach, the tánaiste and other government representatives will travel to more than 50 countries to ‘promote trade, investment, tourism, and international research and education partnerships’, according to a government statement.
This focused approach comes at a time of both high growth and deep uncertainty for the Irish economy. The value of Irish exports hit a record €260.3bn in 2025, although much of the 16.4% year-on-year growth was a frontloaded response to concerns over US tariffs.
St Patrick’s Day is a time to remind ourselves that Ireland’s outsized hold on the global imagination is an enduring one. In this article, we highlight 10 business and industry achievements that reflect the richness and diversity of all the island offers.
Getting better
Ireland is the world’s third largest pharmaceutical exporter, while the medical and pharmaceutical sector directly employs more than 50,000 people in 90 or so companies spread across Ireland, according to the Central Statistics Office. Surging demand for GLP-1 weight-loss medicines is boosting growth, as key ingredients are produced in-country, although a growing challenge is President Donald Trump’s insistence that US companies should do their manufacturing domestically. The St Patrick’s Day meeting in the White House this year between Trump and Taoiseach Micheál Martin will be watched closely.
Black nectar
Founded at St James’s Gate in Dublin in 1759 by Arthur Guinness, the Guinness brewery grew to become not just Ireland’s largest but also (at one stage) the world’s as well as a cornerstone of the Irish economy. Britain continues to be the largest export market – the black stuff was first exported to England in 1796 – while Nigeria, Cameroon and the US also make the top five. Total exports of Irish beer are now valued at €350m, which IBEC says makes the country the joint fourth largest exporter of beer in Europe.
High flier
Beginning as a small regional carrier in the 1980s, Ryanair was transformed under the stewardship of CEO Michael O’Leary into a no frills, ultra-low-cost carrier. It flies daily to more than 230 airports in 37 countries. Its 2023 announcement of a US$40bn investment in Boeing aircraft makes it the US company’s biggest customer in Europe and highlights the fact that transatlantic trade between Ireland and the US is a two-way street.
Assembly-line lift
Northern Ireland’s combined aerospace, defence, security and space sectors currently generate around £2.2bn a year. Belfast is home to the design and manufacture of the all-composite wings for the Airbus A220, while Co. Down-based Collins Aerospace and Thompson Aero Seating meet one-third of global demand for aircraft seats.
Action!
From Game of Thrones to Wednesday, the island of Ireland is a choice location for prestige productions, with Wicklow’s Ashford Studios and Belfast’s Titanic Studios acting as key production hubs. The UK’s Creative Industries Council says Northern Ireland’s creative industries added £1.6bn in gross value in 2022 and accounted for 4.4% of total employment in the region.
Digital lock and key
Belfast boasts one of the world’s most concentrated clusters of expertise in global cybersecurity, including the globally recognised Centre for Secure Information Technologies at Queen’s University Belfast.
Panel power
Kingspan has grown from a small local manufacturer in Co. Cavan to become a leading provider of high-performance insulation and building envelope solutions globally. Its key markets include the UK, continental Europe, the Americas, the Middle East and Australia.
Grass-fed gold
Kerrygold’s distinctive gold foil design, born of a determined effort to upgrade the profile of Irish butter from commodity to brand in the UK market in the 1960s, has proved an enduring classic. TDS Design Magazine, an online brand identity website, says: ‘The scale of Kerrygold’s achievement borders on the impossible. This brand from a country smaller than most US states captured 20% of America’s $5bn butter market, dethroned established players to become Germany’s number one butter brand, and achieved leading imported status across Asia and the Middle East.’
Hitting paydirt
It may have US headquarters, but payments company Stripe has Irish DNA at its core. Founded by the Collison brothers, Patrick and John, Stripe has gone from a 2010 startup to a central pillar of the online payments world with the goal to ‘increase the GDP of the internet’. In February 2026, Bloomberg News reported the company was sizing up a takeover of payments rival PayPal. Though neither party confirmed the report, PayPal shares rose by 7% overnight.
Slàinte!
Whiskey has the most engaging origin story of any Irish product, owing its existence to monks who adapted Arab distillation techniques in the 12th century to produce uisce beatha, the ‘water of life’. In the 21st century a global surge of interest has made Irish whiskey the key product in a national drink exports industry worth more than €2bn. Key brands from Bushmills of Co. Antrim to Paddy of Co. Cork reveal a success story all of Ireland can cheer.
