Ardlinn founder and director Áine Brolly says it will be a year of expansion for the FDI and finance sectors as demand grows for skills in these areas, High earners pay to rise seven times faster than average in 2019

The investment, which is, in part, being driven by companies relocating to Ireland on the back of Brexit developments, is helping to drive growth in demand for senior executive roles in foreign direct investment and the financial services sector.

'Significant' business investment in Ireland will see salaries at executive level jump by as much as 20pc this year.

This is according to a new salary guide from recruitment firm Ardlinn.

In comparison, last month economist and former Department of Finance adviser Dr Alan Ahearne predicted that average wages could increase by 3pc in the next 12 months as the labour market tightens, and that employers would start a bidding war to attract and retain staff.

A 3pc increase in the average industrial wage of €36,500 would amount to a pay increase of just over €1,000 a year.

Elsewhere, the report from Ardlinn found that Ireland is also benefiting from Dublin's ranking as the number one city in the world for technology FDI.

"These sectoral salary increases can be attributed to a number of external factors including Chinese FDI investment up 218pc in 2018, alongside Dublin's ranking as the number one city in the world for tech FDI," the report states.

Meanwhile, salaries in the area of human resources are expected to increase by 10pc in 2019, as businesses move to meet the needs of a fluid job market for the year.

Ardlinn founder and director Áine Brolly said: "With international investment and asset managers setting up offices in Ireland on the back of Brexit, 2019 will see an increase in the need for senior executive appointments to manage workloads and capitalise on business opportunities."

"We predict that 2019 will be a year of expansion for Ireland's FDI and finance sectors as demand grows for skills in these areas."

Ms Brolly added that, while Brexit will be hugely challenging from an Irish economic perspective, "we are seeing certain sectors benefit from the uncertainty in the UK, with our stability and access to EU and global markets proving to be popular with international investors".

The majority of other top chief executive level salaries, when compared to 2018, will remain as they were, with some seeing a slight decrease at the upper level, the report found.

This reflects the GDP outlook for the Irish economy, which is set to maintain "robust growth", albeit at a slightly lower rate of 4.1pc when compared to 5.9pc in 2018.

Elsewhere, upper CEO-level salaries in Dublin continue to dwarf their equivalents in Northern Ireland, with wage variance ranging from 30pc to 80pc.

When compared with other regions in Ireland, executive salaries in Dublin were on average 12pc higher.

Looking ahead, with the financial services sector set to grow by a further 15pc this year, Ms Brolly said it represented good news for the regional towns and cities such as Limerick, Kilkenny, Cork, and Galway.

"This [is] underlined by recent sources showing 60pc of FDI companies are now based outside of Dublin," she added.