Ireland has the highest level of greenhouse gas emissions per employee in the EU, according to a new measurement from the Central Statistics Office.
In its annual report on productivity based on 2021 data, which focuses on the value produced by companies in the economy, the CSO has - for the first time - broken down estimates for the greenhouse gas emissions per employees in different sectors.
Overall, Ireland recorded the highest emissions per employee at 23 kilo tonnes of CO2 equivalent (kt CO2e) in 2021 - above the EU average of 14 Kt CO2e per employee.
The highest emitting sector was electricity and gas, because of its dependency on fossil fuels. This sector also takes in data centres, which has gone from 5% of the sector's emissions in 2015 to 14% in 2021.
The next biggest sector is agriculture, which is down to the contribution from the country's cattle herd.
Today's productivity report also includes a new analysis from the CSO which splits the "gross value added" - a measure of economic output - of different industrial sectors between domestically owned and foreign owned firms.
The analysis finds that gross value added (GVA) across the economy is split 64.5% from foreign owned firms and 35.5% from domestic firms.
The split varied from just 2.2% foreign owned GVA in the agricultural, forestry and fishing sector to just over 91% foreign owned GVA in manufacturing.
Services is more evenly split with 48.9% of GVA coming from foreign owned firms while 51.1% came from domestic firms.
But the difference in GVA from foreign and domestic firms is huge.
The analysis finds that foreign firms in industry produce over six times the value of GVA per employee at €898,502 compared to €136,413 for domestic firms.
Foreign owned companies in services are likely to be two to three times more productive with GVA per employee of €237,021 compared to €70,147 for domestic companies.
The CSO explains that some of the difference is likely to arise from foreign owned companies already being at scale before they locate here while the category of domestic companies includes those at all stages of development.
Yvonne Hayden, a statistician in the CSO's National Accounts Analysis and Globalisation Division, said the data shows Ireland had one of the highest labour productivity rates in the EU when multinationals are taken into account, but the productivity of the domestic sector was "considerably closer to the EU average".
