Ireland is an island in the North Atlantic. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel, the Irish Sea, and St George’s Channel. Ireland is the second-largest island of the British Isles, the third-largest in Europe, and the twentieth-largest on Earth. The Republic of Ireland today ranks amongst the wealthiest countries in the world in terms of GDP per capita and in 2015 was ranked the sixth most developed nation in the world by the United Nations’ Human Development Index. Ireland is home to many of the world’s leading high-performance companies including Intel, Twitter, Pfizer, Citi, Huawei, Takeda, Fujitsu, Novartis and Trend Micro. The country is also positioning itself to become a world leader on the Internet of Things, Big Data, ICT Skills, Energy Efficiency, Health Innovation and Cloud Computing.
