The chances are that when you open your medicine cabinet groggy-eyed on a Monday morning, looking for a hangover cure, the various concoctions facing you have been made in the Republic. So says Kieran Brady, who, after eight years, has just relinquished his role as managing director of Swords Laboratories, the subsidiary of the US pharmaceutical giant, Bristol-Meyers Squibb (BMS).
"The average man in the street does not know the complexity and technology that is being applied here. Some of the most sophisticated science that exists anywhere in the world is being routinely applied here by Irish people," he says of the industry.
He has taken up a new appointment as vice-president of chemical development worldwide, taking responsibility for the company's chemical development sites in the US, Puerto Rico, Italy and the Republic. When BMS first located in Swords in 1964 as the first multinational pharmaceutical company and with one eye on the airport's proximity, it was firmly situated in Co Dublin. Some 35 years on, the city has gone out to meet it and BMS has been joined by 72 other overseas companies in the Republic, employing 12,000 people and providing more than £6 billion (€7.6 billion) in export revenue.
"Now we have got one of the best pharmaceutical infrastructures in the world. You have the colleges producing the graduates in the disciplines with the right training, you have a huge history of knowledge of the business in Ireland," he says. He has a relaxed demeanour and explains that his casual dress style, a jumper and khaki trousers, is his travelling attire. He is going to Budapest to speak at a conference on his company's wonder drug, Taxol. Jointly developed in Swords and the US, Taxol, which has recently won Food & Drug Administration (FDA) approval as a first line therapy drug, has revolutionised the treatment of breast and ovarian cancer, which traditionally have had high fatality rates because of the difficulty of early diagnosis.
Out of a group turnover of $18 billion (€16.4 billion), the revenue from Taxol's sales last year was more than $1.2 billion, with all of the "bulk" (the product at pre-tablet stage) being produced in Swords.
"It is generally recognised within the industry as one of the major advances in the treatment of ovarian and breast cancer in the past three years," he says.
Partly due to that success, Swords, which has a £690 million turnover, is undergoing an investment for the building of new manufacturing facilities at a cost of £75 million. "We currently have about 70 people in process development and that now will grow to close to 100 over the next two to three years. At 100 people it is a significant critical mass within our overall corporate development level."
BMS is also due to begin building its £225 million manufacturing plant at Cruiserath, near Mulhuddart in Co Dublin, this year, where a further 400 employees will be taken on. For Swords and for IDA Ireland, the winning of the Cruiserath contract against competition from Singapore was a coup.
Swords Laboratories is, in common with much of the early pharmaceutical start-ups, involved in "bulk" production of fine chemicals which are subsequently made into tablet form. It is also the main ingredient supplier for Capoten and Monopril, used in the treatment of high blood pressure, and Zerit, an anti-HIV "cocktail" drug, all requiring "complex formulas" and "quite a number of chemical steps".
From Turner's Cross, Cork, Mr Brady admits to always having had an early interest in chemistry and to regularly getting the once ubiquitous chemistry set as a present. "In career guidance talks in the late 1960s and 1970s, the possibility of chemistry coming on-stream as a career was coming on the horizon," he says.
He originally joined BMS in 1979 as a development chemist, after completing a BSc and a PhD in chemistry in UCC. "I suppose I had spent 24 years of my life in Cork at that stage, so it was time for a change. So I will have dual passports soon."
Apart from a two-year stint in Angus Fine Chemicals, now Warner Lambert, in Cork, he has stayed with BMS, working as director of commercial development before becoming managing director in 1991. He looks back on the last three years as the most fulfilling of his eight-year tenure. As part of a global plan, work practices had to be changed from a five-day, 24-hour operation to a seven-day one without increasing manpower levels. "The people who are here have always shown their ability to produce high quality product on time at the right cost. The fact that they showed they were responsive to the changing needs of the corporation was another key feature that I could point to with senior executives of the corporation to convince them that Ireland was the location where they should continue to invest."
The global pressures include governments, particularly in emerging economies, lowering expenditure on healthcare and intense competition in the race to produce new medicines. "There are still many unmet medical needs out there and there is a high level of competition to being the first company to produce a product in a therapeutic area," he says.
Part of his management style comes from his experience as a club footballer, where he learnt the value of team spirit. He played centre field with Nemo Rangers and was coached by the former county coach, Billy Morgan, winning an all-Ireland club medal in 1979. He says team spirit had to be instilled "differently in different people, depending on their make-up".
In Swords, he and the management were given carte blanche on how to introduce the changes and they decided on giving briefing sessions in small groups, getting feedback from the workers on how they could contribute to the company.
"The person at shop-floor level hears from me no more than the people who directly report to me . . . It is time-consuming, but it is well worth doing."
He had to learn to balance his impatience, he says, with the need to communicate the message to people "who have insecurities where you are trying to promote major change".
