Less than one third (32pc) of Ireland’s ICT workers are women, according to new data from the Central Statistics Office (CSO).

The CSO did an in-depth study on Ireland’s ICT workers, which found that although these workers were among the most highly paid in the country, there is still a gap in terms of the number of women in the sector.

The figure of 32pc fell to just 5pc for women employed as telecoms engineers within the ICT industry.

The research, entitled ‘Information and Communications Technology: Value Chain 2019’ presents a full overview of how the ICT workforce contributed to the economy in 2019. The report was published today (24 May).

Michael Connolly, senior statistician said that the “cross-cutting analysis of the ICT sector” drew on areas across the CSO such as census, business, labour market and macro-economic data to allow an in-depth review of the ICT value chain in Ireland to be produced.

As well as the lack of gender balance in the sector, it found that ICT workers had the highest average annual earnings in the country. They received €8.5bn in wages in 2019. €2bn of this was from domestic firms.

Approximately 63pc of the ICT workforce had a third level qualification or higher. This was among the highest in the overall economy.

Almost half of this highly educated workforce was employed by Irish companies. While large foreign multinationals dominated the market where GDP was concerned, domestic companies were found to be active in the export market, with almost half of their IT production being exported (€1.9bn).

Commenting further on the study, Connolly said that the results by firm size showed that large foreign owned MNEs were “10 times more productive than the small and medium sized Irish firms.”

This, he said, resulted in a productivity profile for the domestic companies that is “more comparable with European norms.”

Connolly added that large foreign multinational ICT companies paid almost €4bn in taxes in 2019 before their profits flowed out to their owners.

There was also some “spill over” of expertise with domestic firms, Connolly added. The analysis showed that around 20pc of people who changed jobs in the ICT sector went “between the foreign multinationals and domestic enterprises.”

“While large foreign multinationals dominate the job market, domestic companies employed almost half (40,746) of those (90,766) employed in the sector.”

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