IDA Ireland opens Shanghai office

May 20, 2005 Ireland's highly successful inward investment body, IDA Ireland, has announced that it is to open an office in Shanghai, China. The office will be aimed at attracting Chinese multinationals to invest in Ireland.

IDA Ireland was founded in 1949 as the Industrial Development Authority, however it underwent serious restructuring in 1994 when it became the Industrial Development Agency (Ireland). Since 1994 it has attracted several billion euro worth of foreign direct investment to Ireland and has attracted big names such as Google, eBay, Amazon.com, Dell, Microsoft and Intel to set up operations in Ireland.

In 2003 IDA-supported companies spent €14.7 billion in the Irish economy and directly employed several thousand. It is noted that despite attracting over 500 US multinational corporations to Ireland, the IDA have to date only attracted one Chinese company, Huawei Technologies.