Why Ireland looks twice as rich as Germany: GDP vs GNI*

Gross domestic product counts the value produced inside a country's borders, whoever owns the business that produces it. For most large economies that is close to the income residents receive. Ireland is a small economy that hosts very large foreign-owned multinationals, and their output is booked there. The gap opened sharply in a single year: in 2015, Ireland's real GDP grew by about a quarter, 24.6% in Eurostat's current data and 26.3% when the Central Statistics Office (CSO) first published it in July 2016. The CSO said the jump came from "relocations of entire balance sheets" to Ireland, "dominated by intellectual property products". It names no company.

The CSO's 2025 national accounts (preliminary, published July 2, 2026) put Irish GDP at about 602 billion euros. Gross national income, which nets out income paid to and received from abroad, was about 430 billion, so about 172 billion euros flowed abroad, mostly as the profits of foreign-owned multinationals. The CSO then removes another 96 billion to reach modified gross national income, GNI*: depreciation on imported R&D and intellectual property (69.4 billion), depreciation on leased aircraft (10.3 billion) and the income of redomiciled companies (16.3 billion). What remains is GNI* of about 334 billion euros, 55.4% of GDP. Divided by Eurostat's population figure, that is about 61,061 euros per person (computed). Germany has no GNI*, so the fair comparison is its standard GNI per person, about 56,169 euros (computed, provisional), which leaves Ireland about 9% ahead.

Rankings of GDP per person often put Ireland near the top, and the 2025 ratio of 2.0x is easy to read as a measure of how well off Irish residents are. The checked figures point to where profits are booked instead. Apple and Google are the best-known examples, though the CSO does not tie the 2015 jump to any company. In September 2024 the EU Court of Justice (case C-465/20 P) found that two Apple companies incorporated in Ireland held licences to its intellectual property, with related profits from sales outside the United States, over 1991 to 2014; that was a tax case, not a GDP figure. Google Ireland Ltd booked turnover of 86.6 billion euros in 2024 with an average staff of 4,882, as reported by the Irish Times from its filed accounts.

What households actually consume tells a similar story. Eurostat's actual individual consumption per person, adjusted for local prices with the EU average set at 100, puts Ireland at 100 and Germany at 120 (provisional) in 2025, while GDP per person on the same basis is 238 for Ireland and 115 for Germany. The multinationals still matter for the state: in 2025 foreign-owned multinationals paid 87% of Ireland's net corporation tax while making up 11% of the companies paying it, according to Revenue. Ireland's 2025 accounts are preliminary and Germany's figures are provisional, so later revisions can move all of these numbers.

GDP measures where output is booked, not whose income it becomes. When a few multinationals place large profits and intellectual property in a small economy, GDP per person rises much faster than the income that stays, which is why a 2.0x GDP gap in 2025 narrows to about 9% on GNI* per person.

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