Description of Operations	12 Months Ended
Dec. 31, 2013
Organization, Consolidation and Presentation of Financial Statements [Abstract]
Description of Operations	1. Description of operations Shire plc and its subsidiaries (collectively referred to as either “Shire”, or the “Company”) is a leading specialty biopharmaceutical company that focuses on developing and marketing innovative specialty medicines that address significant unmet patient needs. The Company has grown through acquisition, completing a series of major transactions that have brought therapeutic, geographic and pipeline growth and diversification. The Company will continue to evaluate companies, products and pipeline opportunities that offer a good strategic fit and have the potential to deliver demonstrable value to all of the Company's stakeholders: patients, physicians, policy makers, payors, investors and employees.

The entire disclosure for the nature of an entity's business, the major products or services it sells or provides and its principal markets, including the locations of those markets. If the entity operates in more than one business, the disclosure also indicates the relative importance of its operations in each business and the basis for the determination (for example, assets, revenues, or earnings).

Reference 1: http://www.xbrl.org/2003/role/presentationRef

-Publisher FASB

-Name Accounting Standards Codification

-Topic 275

-SubTopic 10

-Section 50

-Paragraph 2

-URI http://asc.fasb.org/extlink&oid=6927468&loc=d3e6003-108592

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