However, overall expenditure on R&D in Ireland in 2003, at around 1.2 per cent of GDP or 1.5 per cent of GNP, was still below the EU and OECD averages and well short of the Lisbon target of 3 per cent set by the European Council for the EU as a whole.
By international standards, Ireland also ranks quite low in terms of the number of researchers involved in R&D activity and the number of patents registered in either Europe or the US.