Japan's ageing population an opportunity for Irish medical technology companies, says EI chief
There is a 'silver lining' for Irish medical technology companies caused by Japan's ageing population, according to the incoming chief executive of
Enterprise Ireland
(EI),
Jenny Melia
.
Ms Melia, currently the executive director of EI, has joined the Minister for Enterprise, Tourism and Employment, Peter Burke on a joint Enterprise Ireland and IDA Ireland Trade and Investment Mission in Japan.
The mission is set to visit the world exposition in Osaka in the coming days, which Mr Burke described as a 'very significant opportunity' for Irish companies.
'It is no secret that Japan is Ireland's number one objective in growing relations within the Asian region,' the Minister for Enterprise said, noting that the upcoming visit by An Taoiseach Micheál Martin is a 'visible demonstration' of the State's commitment to further developing relation's with Japan, the world's fourth largest economy.
READ MORE
Mr Burke said the Japanese market was 'very complex' but highlighted the potential 'significant value' for Irish companies able to get a foothold.
He highlighted Equal1 which has launched an 'exciting partnership' with Japanese research facility AIST which he said could 'yield significant results in quantum computing', as well as Aerogen, a Galway-based acute-care aerosol drug delivery company, which is expanding into Japan.
[
'Reputation alone will not cut it' for food industry says new Enterprise Ireland chief
Opens in new window
]
EI highlighted significant opportunity for medical technology companies in Japan. The market, which has a population of more than 124 million, is forecast to reduce that by 35 million by 2050 due to a chronically low birth rate and an ageing population.
Ms Melia said Japan's 'changing demographics' creates an opportunity for Irish companies.
'One of the sectors we are really strong in is our MedTech sector and our digital health companies,' she said, noting that Irish companies can bring 'healthcare solutions to Japan to support people to live independently for longer'.
Bobby Healy on why Manna drone delivery could be the 'biggest technology company in the world for its space'
Listen |
67:08
She said there are 7.2 million people in long-term healthcare in Japan, noting that there is a gap for Irish companies to fill in terms of 'slowing down the progression' into such care, as well as supporting Japan with labour force pressures caused by the demographic factors.
'That just gives one example – we will always be looking for the silver lining in somebody else's potential cloud – that is what Enterprise Ireland is about.'
Exports from EI clients to Japan doubled in the last decade, rising to €323 million in 2023, with 50 Irish firms having a permanent presence in Japan, and 23 EI client companies participated in the mission, including ICON plc, Aerogen, Kitman Labs, Fenergo and Druid Software.
[
Michael Carey steps down as chair of Enterprise Ireland and Housing Agency
Opens in new window
]
Mr Burke stressed that the investment goes both ways, with Japanese companies the fifth largest investor into Ireland, employing 8,000 workers in Ireland in technology, pharmaceuticals and financial services.
He noted that Japanese pharmaceutical company Astellas is set to invest a further €129 million in its Irish operations between now and 2028.
The company's investment is expected to create 120 new jobs, with a further 500 to be employed in the construction of new facilities, he said.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Irish Times
14 hours ago
- Irish Times
Mike Ryan: What next for the ‘Indiana Jones of epidemiology' as he leaves WHO?
If Indiana Jones had been an epidemiologist instead of an archaeologist, Hollywood might have looked no further for inspiration than the life and times of a Co Sligo man, Mike Ryan . The 60-year-old is leaving the crisis-hit World Health Organisation (WHO) after decades of fighting deadly diseases in some of the most dangerous places on earth. In January, a week after President Donald Trump signed an executive order pulling the US out of the WHO, Ryan, the organisation's deputy director general, was doing what he does best. He was on his way to check out the response to an Ebola outbreak in Kampala, Uganda, after giving a pep talk in Islamabad to the team trying to eradicate polio in Pakistan and Afghanistan, the last two countries where it remains stubbornly endemic. READ MORE WHO director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus , who visited Dublin this week, says the world is 'living in a golden age of disease elimination' and his one-time right-hand man, Ryan, has been at the forefront of that effort since he joined the organisation in 1996. Tedros paid tribute to Ryan on Friday at a press conference in WHO's Geneva HQ on the inconclusive findings of an advisory group assessing the origins of the Covid virus. 'I know that many of you value his experience and knowledge and his Irish way of saying things. WHO will not be the same without Mike but when he says I am tired and need to go then it is very difficult to keep him,' he said. Tedros with help on pronunciation from Dr Ryan managed to say: 'Go raibh mile maith agat.' 'It's been a long road,' Ryan responded. 'Eight years leading the emergencies programme and I can tell you it's a 24-hour 365 day job and it's been a great honour Tedros to lead it on your behalf and on behalf of all our wonderful staff and partners and people out there on the front lines.' His leading role in the WHO's efforts during the Covid-19 pandemic earned him a Presidential Services Award from Michael D Higgins, and he takes pleasure in the fact that Tom Howley's, his local pub in Curry, Co Sligo, displays a newspaper headline announcing that he shared the honour with Jack Charlton. Dr Mike Ryan and is team in North Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo The young Mike Ryan lost his merchant seaman father at the age of 11 and was raised by his mother along with his two brothers in a family that extends across the border into Co Mayo. He played GAA football up to senior level for Curry, and it's a place he loves to return to when he can. Ryan was the first in his family to go to university. While completing his studies to be a trauma surgeon, he took a job in a hospital in Baghdad, Iraq, and was held hostage there by Saddam Hussein's regime during the first Gulf War. He worked to the point of exhaustion. [ How Dr Mike Ryan became a victim of 'desperate' funding crisis in WHO Opens in new window ] Before his release from Iraq, he fractured his spine in a road incident, which ended his ambition of becoming a surgeon but launched him into what became a distinguished career as an epidemiologist. 'He's the complete package,' says a long-time colleague, Bruce Aylward, a Canadian epidemiologist who also leaves the WHO senior management team this month as major cutbacks get under way. Canadian epidemiologist Bruce Aylward: 'Mike [Ryan] is one of those rare people who can step into those spaces, command respect and chart a way forward. He brings wonderful clarity of vision.' Photograph: Fabrice Coffrini/AFP/Getty Images. 'There's no denying what a giant Mike is in global health and especially in the world of infectious diseases and emergencies. He has been on the front end of so many of these now, so competent. Mike is one of those rare people who can step into those spaces, command respect and chart a way forward. He brings wonderful clarity of vision. At the same time, he's a man of the people who can lead a team in the midst of uncertainty,' adds Aylward. Only time will tell where Dr Ryan goes next. Could it be Áras an Uachtaráin? Head of the HSE? A senior UN role? A return to the WHO as a senior adviser? Or, could he lead a mooted pandemic corps of international health experts to boost preparedness for the next pandemic, possibly funded by Bill Gates? [ Dr Mike Ryan targeted by political parties for potential presidential run Opens in new window ] Could Labour or another political party recruit him as a candidate for the autumn's presidential campaign. His interest in joining the Department of Health has been sounded out, unsuccessfully, before. On the prospect of a run for the presidency, Mary Harney, the former minister for health, said: 'He's a man of enormous substance and highly rated across the globe. I think he would be a very formidable candidate. He's got a lot of street cred especially after his defence of the children of Gaza. I couldn't speak highly enough of him.' Ryan's diplomatic skills are in no doubt following the adoption by UN member states at the World Health Assembly last month of a global pandemic agreement. Following the Covid pandemic, which claimed some 20 million lives, Ryan said: 'The prospect of facing the next big pandemic without some common agreement between states seems unconscionable.' The agreement is a rare example in the current geopolitical climate of a multilateral success for the UN system. It provides a template for future pandemic response and international co-operation, though it still requires a further annex to be adopted at next year's World Health Assembly before it can be fully ratified. Mike Ryan's ability to nurture organisational sea change was first demonstrated 25 years ago when he conceived the idea of a Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network, which today numbers 310 institutions, including national public health agencies and NGOs Exasperated by suggestions that the WHO was a 'deep state'-type agency, Ryan pointed out that the word 'lockdown' does not feature in the text and has likened the role of the WHO to that of the staff at Augusta, home of the US Masters golf tournament. 'We get to cut the greens and serve the sandwiches,' he says. Following its adoption by consensus at the World Health Assembly, Tedros paid tribute to Ryan and his deputy, Jaouad Mahjour, for their tireless support to the International Negotiating Body over the last 3½ years of discussion and drafting. This singular achievement marks Ryan out as someone with the strategic nous to help the UN reinvent itself as it faces into an existential crisis forced by UN member states demanding a reduction in the plethora of UN bodies and mandates as they follow the US example and slash development and humanitarian aid budgets. His ability to nurture organisational sea change was first demonstrated 25 years ago. He then conceived the idea of a Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network, which today numbers 310 institutions, including national public health agencies and NGOs. It has been activated in more than 150 international outbreak responses, dramatically curtailing the spread of infectious diseases and reducing epidemic death tolls. There is a possibility that the UN may turn to Ryan as it seeks to devise a new global health architecture that will break down the silos between UN agencies providing health services to people affected by conflict and disaster. These include Unicef, the children's agency, UNHCR, the refugees agency, and the World Food Programme. Under one option outlined in a recent leaked memo from UN headquarters in New York, operational aspects of these agencies could be merged into a single humanitarian entity. At the same time, the WHO is in discussion with 12 sister agencies and global health initiatives to see how synergies and savings can be made. Ryan has a phenomenal appetite for work. As evidenced by his January visit to Pakistan, he temporarily filled the vacuum left by the untimely death last August of his good friend and colleague, ex-Irish army officer Aidan O'Leary, who was the WHO director of the global polio eradication initiative. [ Aidan O'Leary obituary: Humanitarian who led WHO's polio eradication efforts Opens in new window ] He also led the prioritisation exercise forced on the WHO by budget cuts that are likely to see a 25 per cent cut in staff numbers at its Geneva base and across regional offices, as it faces a shortfall of $1.7 billion in its running costs of $4.2 billion over the next two years. The initial reduction was top-down, reducing the senior management team from 14 to seven, and work got under way in earnest this week to cut the number of department heads from 76 to 34 before a wider cull of staff gets under way. In his parting words on Friday, Dr Tedros told Dr Ryan 'we know where to find you' in a hint that there may yet be work for him to carry out on behalf of the WHO. It was clear in Tedros's initial announcement last month that it was not easy to let him go. 'The new team has been chosen after very careful consideration, and to ensure gender balance and geographical representation,' Tedros said. 'This was, as you can imagine, an extremely difficult and painful decision for me, as it is for every manager in our organisation who is having to decide who stays and who goes.' [ World Health Organisation forges ahead as US makes its absence felt Opens in new window ] Whatever the calculation that resulted in his departure, there is little doubt the WHO has lost one of its finest advocates and best communicators, someone who reassured the world at large that professionals were in charge during the constant rounds of media briefings at the height of the pandemic. Ryan could also engage listeners when he talked about a humanitarian crisis such as the killing and starvation of Palestinians by Israel. He spoke from the heart last month when addressing the UN Geneva press corps on the horrific situation in Gaza. 'We are breaking the bodies and the minds of the children of Gaza. We are starving the children of Gaza because if we don't do something about it, we are complicit in what is happening before our very eyes.' Ryan is a man for all seasons, and it is hard to imagine we have seen or heard the last of him.
Irish Times
15 hours ago
- Irish Times
Where is the value in increasing the Help-to-Buy scheme threshold?
Pre-budget submissions are all about pleadings. Every special interest group in the State makes a pitch for more resources. They all consider their proposals to be in the wider public and economic interest. Some are worthy, many more are largely self-interested. This year the whole process appears to have kicked off earlier than usual, perhaps on the understanding that the largesse of recent years is unlikely to be repeated this time around. In the first place, there is no election. Worries for the medium-term health of Europe's most open economy in a climate where tariffs, trade wars and an absence of consistency on policy are increasingly the norm also will inevitably push Ministers towards a more cautious approach. And for what money is available, the need is to prioritise investment in infrastructure. Expensive upgrades to electricity, water and sewerage networks that are increasingly being cited by foreign direct investors among factors counting against Ireland Inc are needed. READ MORE An EY survey on Friday found that more than two-thirds of Irish businesses 'are worried about securing enough energy to meet future needs', which is an extraordinary number. Put together, it means more things are going to be a tough ask to get over the line. [ First-time buyers in Dublin now locked out of Help-to-Buy scheme, warns Savills Opens in new window ] It seems a strange time then for estate agent Savills to be picking CSO house price data to press for an increase in the upper threshold for the Help-to-Buy scheme. Savills says first-time buyers in Dublin are paying an average of €515,000 for a home, putting them beyond the €500,000 ceiling for Help-to-Buy. It wants that ceiling increased to at least €621,000 to take account of inflation, it says. First, averages are notoriously prone to manipulation by singular expensive property sales. Second, the more reliable median data from the same CSO note shows that prices exceed €460,000 only in Dún Laoghaire Rathdown among the four Dublin local authority areas. [ Developers are bluffing when they say lower prices would undermine viability of house building Opens in new window ] Then there is the maximum available tax refund under Help-to-Buy, which is €30,000. Ignoring that when calling for a higher ceiling is not making property more affordable for first-time buyers in general, only for the very wealthy. It is worth remembering that while the marketing speaks about providing a helping hand for first-time buyers – with even the scheme's name selected for the same reason – Help-to-Buy was from the start a scheme put together to help developers make the numbers stack up on building starter homes. That's not happening, as supply constraints (and prices rising at their fastest rate in 10 years) attest, so for the State – and those first-time buyers – what is the value of widening the incentive?
Irish Times
15 hours ago
- Irish Times
Paul Coulson faces last stand in battle to retain control of Ardagh
Ten years ago last month, Dublin businessman Paul Coulson walked away from a €3 billion deal to buy a glass-bottle business being sold by French building materials group Saint-Gobain. It seemed a rare moment of restraint for a man in a hurry, having spent the previous 15 years turning a once sleepy Irish bottle company into a multibillion-euro packaging giant – Ardagh Group – through a series of purchases funded by debt raised in the high-cost, junk-bond market. It would not last long. Less than a year later, Coulson unveiled a similar-sized transaction, but one that would catapult Ardagh into the business of making cans for beers and fizzy drinks. Today, that business – Ardagh Metal Packaging (AMP), whose customers range from Coca-Cola and Heineken to Nestlé – has surfaced as a prized asset as Coulson and holders of some of wider group's $12.5 billion (€10.7 billion) of borrowings scramble to salvage what they can from an empire saddled with too much debt. Coulson effectively owns 36 per cent of Ardagh Group. READ MORE Ardagh Group has acknowledged for more than a year that it needs to reduce its liabilities, after both its glass and beverage cans businesses had been hit since the Covid-19 pandemic by inflation, soaring interest rates, and soft consumer demand on both sides of the Atlantic. The heavily-indebted business proposed in March that a group of senior unsecured bondholders write off much of the $2.32 billion they are owed in exchange for taking full ownership of the glass containers part of the business. The plan also envisaged Ardagh Group spinning its shares in AMP into new company (NewCo). This would be 80 per cent owned by Coulson and other existing Ardagh Group shareholders – with the unsecured creditors receiving the remaining 20 per cent. Holders of a further $1.79 billion of the group's riskiest debt, so-called payment-in-kind bonds issued by a holding company at the top of the Ardagh corporate tree, know they're toast, with these notes trading below 5 per cent of their original value. Talks with the unsecured creditors broke down in May after they pitched a proposal that would see them take 40 per cent, rather than 20 per cent, of AMP, which has seen its prospects improve in recent quarters, even as the glass containers arm of the group continues to grapple with weak demand. The unsecured creditors also wanted the $784 million of preference shares they were being offered in the NewCo to be increased to $1.07 billion. AMP, in which Ardagh Group has a 76 per cent stake, is listed on Wall Street, where investors have also recently come to appreciate the improving outlook for this business – even as the glass side struggles. The market value of AMP, which has $3.98 billion of ring-fenced borrowings, has jumped more than 45 per cent to $2.59 billion so far this year. This was driven by a spike in April when its chief, Oliver Graham, signalled that the business had 'turned a corner', helped by a rebound in demand for energy drinks, sparkling water and health segments. The value of Coulson's indirect 27 per cent stake in AMP has increased as a result to more than $700 million. This is well off the $1.7 billion it was worth when the stock debuted on the New York Stock Exchange almost four years ago. It is also a fraction of the now 73-year-old's €2.4 billion interest in the wider Ardagh Group when it peaked in April 2021 – before the group delisted and floated its beverage cans unit. It emerged last week that certain bondholders have offered Coulson – who remains on the board of the group, having retired as chairman in late 2023 – and other investors in Ardagh Group $250 million to hand over total control of the empire to creditors and walk away. Shareholders include management and investors that remained on board a tiny version of the current group that was listed in Dublin more than two decades ago. The bondholders clearly do not feel the need to keep Coulson on after a restructuring. This differs from the case of fellow former junk-bond darling, Denis O'Brien , when his overindebted Digicel mobile phone company ran out of road two years ago. Digicel had no equity value when its bondholders took control in a subsequent debt-for-equity swap. However, the creditors left O'Brien with a 10 per cent stake and stock warrants that would entitle him to a further 10 per cent, subject to the company meeting certain targets, knowing they needed him to maintain key relationships with regulators and politicians across its 25 emerging and, in some cases, frontier markets. The problem for Ardagh Group bondholders is the corporate web structure – including a company set up in April 2022, at a time when interest rates were soaring globally, under the group to hold its 76 per cent stake in AMP. This was designated a so-called unrestricted subsidiary, putting its assets out of reach of group creditors. The directors of that subsidiary sought fit last year to set up another unit to hold the prized asset. Bondholders thinking they can wave off Coulson and a small number of legacy investors in Ardagh Group with a $250 million check had better have the bottle for a battle.
