200 Stripe jobs, 3.9% inflation & EVs take the lead... again

02 September 2026

Good morning. Jobs are moving in both directions, energy has pushed inflation to 3.9%, and electric cars have quietly become Ireland’s biggest new-car category. We also have a packed Property & Energy section, a week of increasingly selective spending decisions, and a Worth Your Time on the strange ways tax has literally shaped the buildings around us. Let’s get into it.

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1. Stripe Adds Jobs As Workday Cuts. Stripe plans to add 200 Irish roles across engineering and go-to-market, having already grown its local headcount 35% this year to more than 1,000. Workday is moving the other way, with up to 80 Dublin jobs set to go as part of a global restructuring. It still plans to open its new Dublin EMEA headquarters in February. Different companies, but a useful snapshot of how quickly tech employers are reallocating people around growth priorities.

2. Energy Pushes Inflation To 3.9%. Irish annual inflation reached 3.9% in September on the EU-comparable HICP measure, its highest level in three years. The biggest pressure came from energy, with prices estimated to have risen 2.9% during the month and 15.3% over the year, while food prices were broadly flat in September. If energy costs keep rising into winter, pressure for Government support will grow too, although broad measures come with an awkward trade-off when inflation is already moving higher.

3. Electric Cars Take The Lead. Ireland registered 3,126 new battery-electric cars in September, an 80.2% jump on last year, while the year-to-date total reached 35,195, up 57.3%. Battery-electric cars now hold 27.43% of the new-car market, ahead of hybrids, petrol and diesel. SIMI wants Government supports extended in Budget 2027, but the sales figures already show something more concrete in that electric is now the largest powertrain category in the Irish new-car market rather than just a fast growing niche.

4. Ireland Still Draws Interest & Kerry Expands Abroad. Squarespace is backing its Irish operation with another €70m investment, with Dublin now handling a vast amount of the firm's operations. Its Irish boss also argues that AI can become part of the infrastructure behind websites rather than simply replacing the company’s core business. HSBC is seeing greater interest in Ireland from Chinese and Indian companies, while saying AI has so far improved banker productivity rather than replaced jobs locally. Irish companies are looking outward too. Kerry Group has opened its first manufacturing facility in Pennsylvania, expanding its coffee-extraction capacity for customers across drinks and food.

5. US Tourism Starts To Wobble. North American visitor numbers fell 3% in August compared with last year, with the Irish Tourism Industry Confederation pointing particularly to softer US traffic. Year-to-date visitor numbers remain higher, but North American arrivals have now fallen in two of the past three months. ITIC is using the slowdown to renew calls for stronger competitiveness measures, including extending the 9% VAT rate beyond hospitality. For a tourism industry heavily exposed to high-spending US visitors, a couple of weak months are enough to get attention.

US borrowing costs are still doing the opposite of relaxing, with the 10-year Treasury yield touching 5.31%, its highest since 2007, after its sharpest quarterly rise since 1994. Oil offered a little relief, with Brent slipping to about $97 as Gulf exports recovered and US inventories rose. Eurozone factories also had a better September, with the manufacturing PMI climbing to 52.9, its strongest reading since May 2022. Paramount has meanwhile secured court approval to close its $110bn Warner Bros acquisition, although the settlement comes with cinema-release and US-production commitments. Europe is also discussing whether to release emergency fuel reserves, with Ireland among the countries involved. Cheaper oil, expensive money and one very large Hollywood “wedding”.

Property & Energy

Property & Energy ends the week with buyer demand cooling while the cost and time of building stay stubborn.

Daft.ie put average asking prices up 3% in the year to September, roughly half last year's pace, at just under €445,000 nationally. Buyers are now bidding 2% to 3% above asking, down from 6% to 7% a year ago, though Daft says it cannot tell whether that will last, and supply has not grown. Sherry FitzGerald separately counted first-half apartment approvals up 47% to 8,790, but approvals only matter once they become finished homes.

Delivery is where the friction sits. Murnane & O'Shea won permission for 300 Ballincollig homes beside O'Flynn's refused 1,141-home scheme. Cairn lost its challenge to a €434,403 open-space contribution on 113 Newcastle homes. At Cherry Orchard Point, the LDA's 312-home Phase 3 awaits planning permission, with a contractor targeted for the first quarter of 2028. Arup's Alice Charles said Europe's top contractors do not believe in Ireland's plans for delivering infrastructure.

Commercial property had quieter moves. The former Ibis Red Cow hotel, which houses about 300 asylum seekers under a Department of Justice contract believed to be worth about €600,000 a month, has a guide price of up to €20m, with asylum-accommodation providers thought likeliest to bid. Aviva will move its 900-plus Dublin staff from Cherrywood to One Park Place between January and June 2027. Abroad, TotalEnergies approved $2.5bn of share buybacks for the fourth quarter, up from $1.5bn in the third, while Shell-led partners approved doubling LNG Canada in a multibillion-dollar second phase.

Watch An Coimisiún Pleanála's ruling on O'Flynn's 1,141-home appeal, due by 8 January 2027.

In Monday’s Tá, the Sector Spotlight will be Tech & AI.

Friday – The Week in Summary…

This week showed companies becoming much more deliberate about where they put people and capital.

BNY is hiring hundreds in Dublin as it targets 30% growth here, while Stripe today added another 200 planned roles and Squarespace is backing its Irish operation with €70m. Workday is preparing to cut up to 80 Dublin jobs, SAP has consolidated its Irish businesses and HSBC says AI is helping its bankers become more productive, with future growth potentially requiring less additional headcount. Irish companies are making their own moves abroad too, with Kerry opening its first Pennsylvania manufacturing facility.

Government faces its own allocation choices after the ESRI urged it to build fiscal buffers, more than 100,000 public servants began industrial action, and today’s 3.9% inflation figure put rising energy costs firmly into the winter and Budget conversation. Across business and government, this was a week of tighter choices about where the next euro and the next job go.

Bankinter is offering Ireland’s best available fixed-deposit rate at 2.72%, which sounds decent until you put it beside 3.9% inflation. Even at the top of the market, your savings are still losing purchasing power... isn't that great. Donald Trump remains similarly preoccupied with rates, returning to his on-going 'get him out' shtick with Jerome Powell after already spending plenty of time giving out about his successor. From central-bank governance to football governance, Manchester City could face anything from fines and points deductions to relegation depending on the eventual outcome of its financial-rules case, which would leave its Abu Dhabi ownership group contemplating life well below the Premier League. And McCann FitzGerald’s search for a new Dublin office is finally over. The winner? Its current office. Good fun. Sometimes the best property search ends with closing Daft and staying put.

The Read – RTÉ Brainstorm – How historical taxes helped shape the buildings around us

With Budget 2027 due on Tuesday, two University of Limerick accounting academics trace how tax has shaped buildings. Ireland's 1799 window tax counted windows already in place, so they find little evidence of windows being bricked up here, with new houses more likely designed around the bill. The 1793 hearth tax is linked to Irish homes built without chimneys, while brick tax, extended here in 1826, produced larger bricks. Amsterdam's frontage tax shaped its narrow canal houses. A quick read on how people adapt to tax rules, with a timely pre-Budget angle. Link: How historical taxes helped shape the buildings around us

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