Novartis in Ireland

Company overview

Novartis Ireland Limited is the Irish affiliate of Swiss-based Novartis AG – one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world. Novartis is one of Ireland’s leading employers in the healthcare industry. One of the first pharmaceutical companies to locate in Ireland in the 1950s, Novartis has a strong history of investing in Ireland over the last sixty years.

Novartis currently employs approximately 900 people in Dublin. In March 2013, Novartis announced the establishment of the Novartis Corporate Center in Elm Park, Dublin. Novartis Commercial Operations is also based in Elm Park. Novartis’ nationwide presence and flexible working options means there are Novartis employees based all over Ireland.

Click here to download the full Novartis Ireland Economic and Environmental Footprint

Novartis has five key therapy areas: Neuroscience, Cardiovascular, Immunology, Oncology and Cell and Gene and Radioligand Therapy. Novartis has a strong pipeline, with more than 100 products in clinical development, and ranks number five in Ireland in terms of number of clinical trials^1,2,3,‡.Ireland is a hub of research and development for Novartis, with over 165 Ireland-based R&D employees, and almost €25 million invested by Novartis in Ireland, in this area in 2023. For more information on our products, please go to https://www.medicines.ie

Reflecting our commitment to innovation, 19.9% of pharma net sales globally is invested back into research and development, focusing on the areas of greatest patient need and scientific promise⁴. Watch the video to see the impact of innovation and collaboration on patients’ lives in Ireland.

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Find out more about our work in Ireland and what matters to us below

Novartis Commercial Operations at Elm Park

Health systems around the world, and in Ireland, are under pressure from the challenges of an aging population and managing chronic diseases. At Novartis Innovative Medicines we're working hard to address these issues and add value to the healthcare system through our range of medicines. As well as medicines, we are providing healthcare solutions “beyond the pill” that are fit for the future, for example new technologies, innovative devices, and patient-centric services. For example our Razorbill clinical trial, conceived in Ireland, but with sites across the globe, assessed the use of artificial intelligence in reading scans of the eye in people with sight-threatening disease, in order to support treatment decisions, and improve outcomes for patients⁵.

Novartis Corporate Center at Elm Park

The Novartis Corporate Center was set up in 2013 and delivers a variety of services to Novartis globally. This Dublin-based hub employs a deep talent pool driving innovation, standardisation and world-class service delivery. The Center delivers high quality commercial, medical and clinical business solutions leveraging the significant life science and tech ecosystem in Ireland. Geographically positioned between the Novartis Headquarters in Switzerland and the US, the Corporate Center's Dublin location enables a deep partnering and understanding of key customer business problems. This offers opportunities for the Center to innovate and stabilise healthcare integrated business solutions for customers and patients from an English-speaking corporate base. The Novartis Corporate Center is one of six such hubs managing Novartis’ operations, services and corporate business worldwide. Within these six, Dublin is one of 5 centres for Global Drug Development hosting over 250 individuals responsible for delivering global clinical trials. There are currently >50 nationalities employed at the site, speaking 32 languages. Almost half of the employees are educated to master’s degree level while 20% hold a PhD.

Manufacturing at Ringaskiddy - Sterling Pharma Solutions

In 2022, Novartis announced it had reached an agreement with Sterling Pharma Solutions, a leading global development and manufacturing company, to produce medicine for Novartis (active pharmaceutical ingredient (API)) in Ireland. Sterling Pharma Solutions are producing Novartis APIs for cardiology, immunology and oncology medicines. In 2022, the production facilities secured a $16million US Dollar investment from Novartis, to manufacture a significant cardiovascular medicine on the site.

We demonstrate our values through our actions

Corporate Responsibility and working environment

We are committed to improving health through responsible business practices. A key part of that is our engagement with the wider community outside of Novartis and our volunteer activities. As well as this, we want to create an inclusive, supportive and empowering workplace for our teams, and are proud of our numerous employment awards. We also partner with patient communities around Ireland to improve and extend people's lives. At Novartis we have worked to ensure we support patient communities at every step of their journey, from pre-diagnosis all the way through to living well with a health condition.

Read more about Novartis' societal impact in Ireland here.

Novartis is the only pharmaceutical company to have signed the United Nations' Equal Pay International Coalition Pledge

Protecting the environment

We work to ensure that our business practices are environmentally friendly, minimising their impact as much as possible. We have set ourselves ambitious environmental goals in Ireland, which we are on our way to achieving. We aim to be water- and plastic-neutral by 2030 and achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2040, and our Elm Park campus is almost 100% single-use plastic free. In 2022, Novartis Ireland was shortlisted as Green Large Organisation of the year, owing to our ambitious work in this space and the large number of internal and external projects we have in place to drive sustainability.