Minister Troy welcomes Ireland’s strong performance in European digitalization rankings

Ireland is fifth in the EU Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI)

Minister for Trade Promotion, Digital and Company Regulation, Robert Troy TD, today welcomed the news that Ireland has again turned in a strong performance in the DESI by holding on to its fifth place in the European Commission’s assessment of all 27 EU Member States.

The Index shows Ireland performed very well on all fronts, including for the following indicators –

• Human capital: The share of people with basic digital skills and digital content creation skills is above the EU average.
• Connectivity: a top performer for mobile broadband take up, almost reaching 100% of people. Up from 7^th place on this indicator last year to 6^th in 2022.
• Integration of Digital Tech: almost half of enterprises taking advantage of cloud services, again above the EU average of 34%.
• Digital Public Services: a score of 95% in open data.

After receiving this year’s positive DESI assessment, Minister Troy said,

“This is a fantastic endorsement of the approach we take in Ireland to digital transformation. This year’s DESI shows that Ireland has delivered tangible results in several areas, such as increasing our number of e-Government users. I am also pleased to see that our score for ICT graduates has increased. Other standout numbers are our take-up of mobile broadband and a significant increase in 5G coverage.

“As a Minister with responsibility for business, I am also delighted to see that we once again scored a perfect 100 for provision of digital public services to business. When read together these various scores paint a very positive picture of where Ireland is on our journey to digitalisation. But we must not be complacent. We operate in a fast and dynamic environment – we need to press ahead.

“Earlier this year I co-launched the new National Digital Strategy, announced the Grow Digital Fund and had the pleasure of appointing Ireland’s first AI Ambassador, Dr Patricia Scanlon. I am determined to keep up the momentum and ensure we maintain Ireland’s position at the forefront of digitalisation in Europe.”

Ireland’s position in the Index makes us a prominent member of the EU Digital 9+ (D9+) front-runner countries. The D9+ group is a loose affiliation of like-minded Member States on Digital Single Market issues, comprising the top-ranked European countries in the DESI.