Irish enterprises are upping their investment in digital technologies and related innovations to support their sustainability goals and reduce environmental impact, according to the country’s Central Statistics Office (CSO).
As the CSO noted, in 2025, 27% of Irish enterprises used information and communication technology (ICT) systems to reduce energy consumption, while 18% employed ICT to reduce material use or enhance the use of recycled materials. Across all enterprises, 33% used ICT in some form to lower their environmental impact, exceeding the EU average of 30%.
Larger enterprises were more likely to apply such technologies, with 66% using ICT to reduce energy and 50% to reduce material use, compared with lower proportions of medium and small enterprises.
‘Increasing importance’
“Sustainability is of increasing importance to enterprises, in terms of meeting environmental regulations and expectations, but also from an economic and social perspective,” commented Morgan O’Donnell, statistician in the CSO‘s Sustainability, Circular Economy & Transport division. “There is increasing national and international recognition that economic growth alone is not a sufficient measure of success, and that long term prosperity depends on achieving a balanced integration of economic, environmental, and social outcomes.”
Enterprise R&D in Ireland is concentrated among a small number of largely foreign-owned companies – in 2023, enterprises spent €7.0 billion on R&D, with 84% contributed by foreign-owned enterprises. The top ten enterprises accounted for 58% of total expenditure.
AI adoption
Elsewhere, the CSO’s data also found that the adoption of artificial intelligence has also increased among Irish enterprises, rising from 8% in 2023 to 20% in 2025.
Large enterprises (58%) were significantly more likely to make use of AI than medium (29%) or small (17%) sized enterprises. The adoption of AI by Irish enterprises is on a par with EU average (20%), but significantly behind that of EU leaders Denmark (42%) and Finland (38%).
“The adoption of new and emerging technologies are generally considered an important factor in long-term economic, environmental, and social sustainability,” O’Donnell added. “We see in this release how foreign enterprises play a central role in research and innovation in Ireland, how the extent of digitalisation among Irish enterprises has increased in recent years across a range of areas, and how enterprises are using technology to reduce their environmental impact through improvements in energy and material use.” Read more here.
