🏠 €11.8bn on housing, 100 ESB electrician roles, and fewer HPE staff in Galway

10 August 2026

Good morning. Ireland is using more AI without necessarily building much around it, HPE’s Galway headcount has fallen, and the State now has €11.8bn tied up across housing supports and financing. Trump’s Doonbeg visit is becoming a security operation, while Hormuz negotiations are getting closer without getting simpler. Let’s get into it.

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1. AI Adoption Is Growing Faster Than AI Depth. Fewer than one in five small Irish firms have embedded AI into most or some business practices, while 92% of those using it rely on generic tools. The employment picture is getting harder to read as well with 15-to-29-year-old employment in legal and accounting fell 6.7% last year, although experts disagree on how much AI caused it. Adoption is spreading while redesigning businesses and jobs around it is moving more slowly.

2. HPE’s Galway Headcount Turns Back. Hewlett Packard Enterprise says it delivered the 150 jobs promised for Galway in 2023, but its workforce has since fallen from an average 374 employees to 340, with more than €2m spent on redundancy payments. That sits distinctly beside ESB Networks opening applications today for up to 100 qualified electricians nationwide. Ireland is still hiring, but it is splitting between sectors, especially between private and public where the former must cut costs to maintain shareholder approval and the latter must spend to meet public needs.

3. Housing Now Has €11.8bn Of State Support Behind It. Business Post analysis puts direct State intervention in housing at €11.8bn this year across more than 40 programmes, tax measures and semi-State financing channels. That includes €6.5bn of programme spending, €1.3bn of tax supports and €4bn of semi-State capital. The scale is striking and so is the number of separate schemes being used to keep development, purchasing and renting moving.

4. Irish Food And Drink Is Following The Health Money. VitHit is reportedly nearing a sale, with Vimto owner Nichols believed to be the buyer, while Agriculture Minister Martin Heydon says GLP-1 weight-loss drugs could reshape demand towards nutrient-dense foods. Alcohol-free brewer Fierce Mild is chasing the same broad consumer shift as it grows sales and raises fresh funding. Different products but the same bet as healthier consumption is becoming a commercial category rather than a niche.

5. Trump’s Doonbeg Visit Becomes A Business And Security Operation. Donald Trump is due in Ireland for the Irish Open at Doonbeg on 12 September, with a meeting with Taoiseach Micheál Martin widely expected and speculation he could also visit the site of the new US embassy. The trip could involve up to 1,000 US personnel alongside a major Garda operation, while renewed Middle East tensions are already feeding into Irish energy costs. A golf trip is becoming a sizeable exercise in diplomacy, security and logistics.

Iran says a temporary Strait of Hormuz transit deal is “very close”, but reopening the chokepoint is another matter. Tehran wants compensation over the collapsed June agreement, an end to the US naval blockade on Iranian ports, military withdrawals, sanctions relief and frozen assets released, while any deal still needs Supreme Leader approval. Shipping risks remain live after attacks on UAE vessels and a claimed Houthi strike on Saudi Aramco’s Jazan refinery. European stocks are drawing investors back as earnings strengthen, while WPP shares jumped 27% as restructuring and AI savings started to show through. Berkshire’s Greg Abel also bought a net $19.8bn of stocks in Q2, ending Warren Buffett’s three-year selling streak. Hargreaves Lansdown, meanwhile, wants its 2,400 staff back three days a week from next year.

Tech & AI

Ireland's AI sector this week sits at the friction point between surging capital commitment and the physical grid capacity needed to support it.

That tension crystallised in a standoff between hyperscalers and EirGrid. The grid operator wants tighter "ride-through" rules forcing data centres to stay connected during system faults rather than switching instantly to backup power, warning of instability risks otherwise.

AWS, Microsoft, Meta and Google, represented by Cloud Infrastructure Ireland, told the CRU the specialised equipment required is not yet commercially available, warning of "billions of euros in stranded assets" if the rules apply retroactively to live sites. EirGrid has proposed a two-year derogation period, but Digital Infrastructure Ireland called the capacity limits attached to that window the "single greatest commercial risk" in the plan. Not every operator is holding back regardless: Equinix's Peter Lantry said he would make a multimillion-euro investment to meet the new requirements. Consultancy Bitpower estimates €12.8bn of data centre investment is already at risk from combined planning and power constraints.

Capital continues arriving despite the friction. Anthropic is set to take 21,000 sq ft at Iput's Styne House on Hatch Street, a sixfold increase on its current Dublin footprint, with its workforce here now past 85 following March's 200-jobs pledge. Separately, Anthropic is building an in-house chip design team for Claude, and Bloomberg's reporting of a $10bn Volta computing deal remains unconfirmed by the company itself.

Globally, Foxconn's July sales rose 54.2%, underscoring sustained AI hardware demand, while the UAE is weighing a €5.4bn AI data centre investment in Japan, a sign capital is also chasing jurisdictions seen as geopolitically steadier than some Western markets.

The forward watch is the CRU's eventual ruling on EirGrid's grid code changes.

In Tuesday’s Tá, the Sector Spotlight will be Legal & Regulatory.

Monday - The Weekend Round-Up…

WPP shares jumped after its restructuring showed early progress, with AI-linked efficiencies part of a programme that has already cut thousands of jobs. Aurivo appointed JP McGrath as chief executive, giving the northwest-based co-op a new leader. Aer Lingus is facing scrutiny after failing to report an aircraft incident within the timeframe required by aviation safety rules, while the National Standards Authority of Ireland is planning up to 20 redundancies. Supermac’s won another round in its long-running EU trademark battle with McDonald’s. FBD reported stronger half-year results, helped by underwriting and investment performance. Johnson & Johnson agreed a $5.5bn settlement covering tens of thousands of US talc claims. And beneath otherwise calm markets, sharp moves in names including Intel and Nvidia showed how much volatility is still sitting inside the headline indices.

It takes a lot to knock Mayo’s All-Ireland celebrations off the national conversation, even two weeks later with new AIB data showing pub spending in the county jumped 210% after the final. But Daniel Kinahan’s return managed it. Years of Garda work, diplomacy with the UAE, and a new extradition treaty culminated on Sunday with alleged the alleged Kinahan cartel leader flown home on the Government jet, charged, and remanded in custody. By then, much of Ireland was following the journey in real time with the flight the most tracked flight in the world on Flight Rader, catching the eye of thousands.

The Read – The Irish Times – How Flutter Lost Its Winning Streak

Paddy Power parent Flutter’s fall from above $300 a share to around $92 in a year is bigger than one bad quarter. The Irish Times looks at the slower-than-expected US betting market, competition from prediction platforms such as Polymarket and Kalshi, higher taxes and regulation, and the investment Flutter is now making in FanDuel. The group still takes $39 of every $100 wagered on US sports, but four consecutive profit downgrades show how quickly expectations have changed. A useful read on how a market leader can remain dominant while investors lose confidence. The Link: How Flutter Lost Its Winning Streak

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