Ireland has for the first time been named as the “best country for business” in rankings carried out by renowned US financial magazine Forbes.

Ireland has moved up from sixth position in the influential rankings last year. The rankings are determined by grading 145 nations on 11 different factors: property rights, innovation, taxes, technology, corruption, freedom (personal, trade and monetary), red tape, investor protection and stock market performance.

'Forbes' also pointed out that Dublin serves as the European headquarters for a number of tech firms including Google and Facebook.