AmCham’s FDI Insights: The Bigger Picture – South brings together insights from the leadership of AmCham member companies in the Southern region and nationally between 2023 and 2026, highlighting how the opportunities and challenges shaping Ireland’s investment proposition have evolved over time.

The findings highlight the evolving risks to continued foreign direct investment, with housing remaining a significant concern for businesses in the South. In AmCham’s Q3 2026 FDI Insights Survey, 40% of respondents in the region identified housing as the greatest risk to continued FDI in Ireland over the next five years, up from 18% in Q1 2026. Public infrastructure constraints were cited by a further 20% of respondents.

The report provides valuable insights into the changing priorities of businesses in the Southern region and the importance of addressing competitiveness challenges to support continued investment and growth.

AmCham’s FDI Insights: The Bigger Picture – West-North-West brings together insights from the leadership of AmCham member companies in the West-North-West and nationally between 2023 and 2026, highlighting how the opportunities and challenges shaping Ireland’s investment proposition have evolved over time.

The findings show a changing competitiveness landscape for businesses in the region. While housing has remained a persistent challenge to expansion, cost competitiveness has risen significantly, with 83 percent of West-North-West respondents identifying it as the number one challenge Ireland must overcome for their company to expand in the latest survey, compared with 17 percent in early 2024. Nationally, the figure has also risen, from 10 percent to 33 percent over the same period.

The report also points to continued confidence in employment across the region, with half of respondents expecting to increase employee numbers over the next 12 months and the remaining half expecting employment to remain unchanged. At the same time, access to skills remains an important consideration, with one-third of respondents reporting skills gaps in both engineering and machine learning and AI.

Confidence among US multinationals operating in Ireland remains strong, according to the latest AmCham FDI Insights Survey, with nine in ten companies planning to maintain or increase employment over the next 12 months. 

The survey found that almost half, or 48 percent of respondents are planning to expand their workforce in the next year, while 70 percent said their corporate headquarters already have plans to invest further in Ireland during the next five years.

The findings point to continued confidence in Ireland as a location for foreign direct investment while also highlighting the importance of addressing competitiveness challenges to support future growth.

Cost competitiveness emerged as the most significant challenge companies believe Ireland must address to support future investment and expansion, cited by one-third of respondents. This was followed by housing at 27 percent. Meanwhile, when looking at the greatest long-term risks to foreign direct investment over the next five years housing availability and public infrastructure constraints were both cited by 22 percent of respondents, ahead of trade tariffs at 16 percent. 54 percent of respondents also said Ireland's current energy infrastructure and security of supply represented a competitive disadvantage relative to other international investment locations.

AmCham’s 2026 US–Ireland Business Report, “A Partnership that Delivers: Supporting the Next Generation of Transatlantic Business” highlights the strength and continued evolution of the economic relationship between Ireland and the United States.

The report tells the story of one of the most dynamic and deeply embedded economic partnerships in the world – a two-way investment relationship that supports jobs, innovation and prosperity on both sides of the Atlantic. Today, American companies employ approximately 245,000 people in Ireland, while Irish companies employ over 200,000 people across all 50 US states. Ireland is now the fifth largest source of foreign direct investment into the United States, with Irish companies having invested $390 billion in the US economy.

Companies operating across the US–Ireland corridor continue to invest in high-value sectors including advanced manufacturing, life sciences, digital technologies and artificial intelligence, strengthening research capability and supporting the development of world-class talent.

As the EU prepares its next major phase of research and innovation funding, decisions taken now will shape where global innovation happens for the next decade.

AmCham Ireland’s new white paper, Driving Innovation: The Potential of Horizon Europe, sets out why reducing barriers to EU research funding and keeping collaboration open to trusted international partners will be critical to Ireland’s and Europe’s competitiveness.

The paper highlights:
• growing restrictions on participation under Horizon Europe
• the impact on key sectors such as digital, cybersecurity and advanced manufacturing
• the importance of multinational–academic collaboration in turning research into jobs, investment and industrial scale
• practical recommendations to ensure Ireland is ready to maximise the opportunity of the next Horizon Europe programme (FP10)

With €175bn in EU research and innovation funding planned from 2028 to 2034, this is a pivotal moment for policymakers, industry and the research community.