Irish employers have topped a European table for sponsoring students in executive masters in business administration (MBA) programmes.

The Financial Times executive MBA table of business schools also ranked the UCD Smurfit School as 19th in Europe and 63rd in the world.

The school was the only Irish business school to feature in the table of the top 75 business schools in the world.

The survey found that within three years of graduating, graduates of the school had seen an average increase in their earnings of 53 per cent, as compared with when they began the course.