Although the Irish government is struggling to keep the Irish economy afloat, some Irish entrepreneurs are thriving. Breast implant maker GC Aesthetics and energy company Gaelectric raised $30 million and $18 million respectively, while Creganna-Tactx Medical was bought in a deal that values the company at $304.7 million.  
 
GC Aesthetics, which is backed by Irish businessman Bill McCabe, who previously founded Riverdeep and Smartforce, got it’s investment from California-based venture capital  firm Montreux Equity Partners last week. The money will be used to expand the company.
 
Ken Pearce, GC’s CEO, said “Montreux is dedicated to building and investing in healthcare leaders. This investment allows us to expand the global reach of our products in this rapidly growing sector.”

Daniel K. Turner III, the managing director at Montreux, said, “GCAL has established a global leadership position in the aesthetic medical device industry.”

GC’s products are sold in 90 countries around the world, including parts of Europe, Asia, and South America.
 
Gaelectric, which has operations in America and Europe, raised $19 million in funding from European private equity sources, and plans to develop wind energy plants in Montana.
 
Gaelectric’s president of North American operations, Eamonn McGrath, said: “States like Montana, which have high quality wind regimes and that have historically confronted sizeable transmission development barriers, will now reap that value in a shorter timeframe.”
 
“Gaelectric is the first wind developer in Montana to book transmission capacity at a scale which will allow renewable power to be exported from some of Montana's highest wind energy sites directly to markets in the Pacific Northwest,” he said. “We see this investment as both an important endorsement of Gaelectric's vision of developing wind projects and as an initiative which will start a process to unlock the tremendous wind resource of the mid-west."

Gaelectric was founded in 2004 and entered the U.S. market two years later, in 2006.
 
Meanwhile, Creganna-Tactx Medical was bought in a deal that values the business at more than $300 million.

Creganna had been owned by the Quinn family and Altaris Capital Partners but they are selling the majority of their share to private equity firm Permira.
 
Creganna makes component parts for medical devices such as cathaters and speciality needles for more than 240 companies and has manufacturing sites in Ireland, the United States, Singapore and Korea.