DUBLIN, Ireland — The global reach of Lake County companies hits home while traveling an Irish motorway as the familiar logo of Abbott Laboratories comes into view. The local healthcare firm isn’t the lone county company with a presence in the Emerald Isle.
Big Pharma is a major employer in Ireland, especially in the country’s key pharmaceuticals hub on the outskirts of Cork, in southern Ireland. Since 1946, Abbott has had close ties to the Irish Republic.
Of course, U.S. corporations have had multinational operations since the end of World War II, as part of their innovative growth and partly due to the shrinking nature of global commerce. AbbVie and Baxter, two other major Lake County employers in the Big Pharma brotherhood, also have significant Irish footprints.
About 40% of Irish exports come from the medical and pharmaceutical sectors, according to media reports in the republic which have noted trade tariffs have cut into the country’s export market to the U.S., Ireland’s top exporting partner. American businesses and consumers buy just over 25% of all exported Irish goods.
Currently, Abbott employs more than 6,000 people across 10 Irish locations — from Donegal in western Ireland east to Dublin, the capital — with facilities involved in a broad range of products including diagnostic tests, medical devices and nutritional supplements.
Nearly a year ago, the firm opened a state-of-the-art facility employing 800 workers in Kilkenny in southeast Ireland, part of a 440 million euro investment to manufacture glucose monitoring devices for those with diabetes.
Ireland, once known for its agricultural economy — there are more than 300,000 sheep in Mayo County alone, along the Wild Atlantic Way where the ocean rises to meet jagged cliffs — has worked hard to lure investment from what is considered by the nation the crucial pharma sector.
In a listing of the country’s biggest 1,000 firms, The Irish Times last week listed biopharmaceutical giant Pfizer Inc., headquartered in New York City, the fifth-largest company in Ireland.
In the annual report, Abbott Ireland ranked 81st; Baxter International at 235; Abbott Laboratories, 726; and AbbVie, 753.
AbbVie employs nearly 3,000 employees across six sites in Cork, Dublin, Sligo and Mayo. The company, spun off from Abbott in 2013, inherited a few former Abbott facilities in Ireland, one dating to 1974.
Some may recall that more than a decade ago, the North Chicago-based corporation toyed with moving its headquarters to Ireland for tax purposes as it wooed Ireland-based Shire Plc. AbbVie had proposed a $55 billion purchase of Shire.
It ended up shelling out $1.64 billion for a “breakup fee” when the deal was called off. AbbVie officials blamed changes to the U.S. tax code.
Those changes, sought by President Barack Obama, were aimed at stopping a rush of American firms from leaving the country to take advantage of lower overseas corporate tax rates. Shire was eventually acquired by Takeda Pharmaceuticals, formerly headquartered in Deerfield, for $50 billion in 2019. Fortune Brands now occupies the former Takeda site off the Tri-State Tollway.
Deerfield-based Baxter moved into Ireland in the mid-1960s and built its first manufacturing site there in 1972, according to the company. It has two manufacturing sites in County Mayo, along with other facilities in Dublin, employing nearly 2,000 Irish men and women.
Foreign investment by U.S. firms overseas is made possible by similar investment in this country, such as the announcement last month by AbbVie. The firm said it will spend $195 million to expand active pharmaceutical ingredient production at its North Chicago facility.
Plans call for the new plant to be operational in two years. The company said the facility will expand AbbVie’s domestic production of neuroscience, immunology and oncology medicines.
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AbbVie employs more than 11,000 people around the globe, including 6,000 American jobs at 11 manufacturing sites while at the same time supporting thousands of additional jobs with suppliers across the U.S. The North Chicago expansion is part of AbbVie’s commitment to invest more than $10 billion of capital in the U.S. over the next decade.
While the outlook for Big Pharma may look rosy in Ireland, the Irish Independent newspaper based in Dublin reported last week those nagging trade tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump on the European Union, of which Ireland is a member, are hurting the value of Irish exports to the U.S. Exports were off 17% in July compared to July 2024 and also had dipped in June.
Offsetting the drop in Irish export trade, though, is a strong euro, compared to the U.S. dollar. American travelers need to consider that when they journey into the eurozone and find the greenback doesn’t go as far as one thinks.
Charles Selle is a former News-Sun reporter, political editor and editor.
X: @sellenews