New figures from the Central Statistics Office show that research and development spending by enterprises rose by 15% in 2013 to top €2 billion for the first time.
The figure are contained in the CSO's Business Expenditure on Research and Development survey.
The CSO said that current expenditure - which includes labour costs and other current costs - accounted for 93% of all expenditure in 2013.
Capital expenditure accounted for the remaining 7% or €147m of total expenditure.
Today's research also shows that foreign owned enterprises accounted for 65% of all R&D expenditure, with just over €1.2 billion being spent on current expenditure. This represented 93% of all expenditure of foreign owned enterprises.
Irish owned enterprises in comparison spent just over €700m on R&D with current expenditure at €645m accounting for nearly 92% of this expenditure, the CSO added.
R&D spending was highest in the services sector which accounted for 57% of all expenditure. Spending in this sector was just under €1.2 billion in 2013 while the manufacturing sector spent over €864m on R&D over the 12 month period.
The survey was carried out in 28 European Union member states and it showed that Irish spend on R&D was below the European average.
