A positive Friday Tá ☘️

25 September 2026

Good morning. Friday has arrived with a refreshingly positive Top 5, from Citi and BNY backing Ireland to fresh investment, expansion and some very big pharma numbers. We’ve also got a properly comprehensive Property & Energy Spotlight, a quick look back at the week that was and, because it is Friday, an especially fun Craic and Scéal involving Ivan Yates, disappearing 3G and several ways to spend your paycheque. Let’s get into it.

1. Citi And BNY Put Fresh Weight Behind Ireland. Citi expects to move into its new Dublin headquarters by year-end, with chief legal officer Brent McIntosh calling Dublin a “truly international financial hub” and describing the building as a €570m commitment to the capital. BNY also told Helen McEntee that Ireland is a future growth market, praising its financial-services technology base and environment for AI deployment. Two global banks are giving Ireland unusually direct backing at a time when Europe is still wrestling with competitiveness and fragmented regulation.

2. Glanua Heads West As Squarespace Puts Another €70m Into Ireland. Galway-based Glanua has opened its first US office in Philadelphia and plans more than 200 hires there, while carrying a €900m order book to 2030. Squarespace, meanwhile, is investing another €70m in Dublin to support R&D, product innovation and international growth. One Irish company is exporting specialist engineering capability into America while a US technology company is putting fresh money into its Irish operation.

3. Pharma And Medtech Sales Double To €211bn. Total goods sales across Ireland’s pharma and medtech sectors doubled from €105bn in 2019 to €211bn in 2025, while exports rose 86% to €164.2bn. DAA also reported turnover up 5% in H1, despite profit after tax falling 6% as Middle East disruption hit parts of its international business. The common thread is that Irish-based businesses remain deeply tied into international trade and activity well beyond the domestic market.

4. Profits, Portfolios And Two More Dublin Stores. Davy’s UK arm returned to profit in 2025, moving from a loss of more than £3m to a modest £84,350 profit. Sean O’Driscoll and Rose O’Riordan’s Roaring Waters Capital increased profit 80% to €9.7m and added €14.1m of investments. Popular Irish lunch spot, Carved, is also opening two more Dublin stores, with its workforce set to rise to around 60 and it is now opening itself to UK franchising opportunities. Different businesses, different scales, but all three added evidence of activity rather than retrenchment.

5. After All That Good News, There Are Still A Few Pressure Points. Some Irish Revolut customers were identified as potentially affected by a DriveWealth data breach involving historical records, although Revolut says passwords, card details and ID documents were not exposed. Fuels for Ireland says repeated temporary fuel-tax interventions are becoming harder to sustain, while the HSE is heading for a projected €1bn overspend, with agency staffing expected above €800m. After four largely positive points, this is where the operational and cost pressures show up.

Global bond markets took another hit as the US 10-year yield climbed to 5.17% and Ireland’s reached 3.715%, raising borrowing costs across markets. SoftBank still found buyers for an $11.1bn high-yield bond sale, the largest of its kind on record. The EU is pressing Britain to align more closely with its tariffs on Chinese cars, while European battery-electric registrations rose 52.2% in August as petrol and diesel sales fell sharply. Oracle shares also dropped after it invoked force majeure protections around a delayed New Mexico data-centre project. Higher financing costs are not stopping investment, but they are making the price of getting it wrong considerably steeper.

Property & Energy

Property & Energy this week is a story of approvals and grids that work on paper but strain in practice. O'Flynn Group has appealed Cork City Council's refusal of 1,150 Ballincollig homes, calling the council's traffic and phasing objections a misreading of what it actually applied for, while Bam is separately contesting Cork's decision to strip 74 bed spaces from its 500-bed student scheme over heritage concerns.

Both sit  against Housing Minister James Browne's claim that Ireland is now one of Europe's strongest delivery performers, with 7.2 completions per 1,000 people and 16,679 homes built in H1, even as CIF delegates in Croke Park warned under-resourced local authorities are taking up to 14 months to process large-scale applications. The Society of Chartered Surveyors wants Budget 2027 to include capital gains and stamp duty relief to unlock vacant and derelict buildings, arguing existing grants only work for single units.

Energy costs are the more difficult pressure point. Wholesale electricity prices rose 76.9% in the year to August, tracking the oil price since the US-Iran conflict began, while European diesel is running 40% above January levels. Global diesel supply is now expected to stay tight into 2027, with Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Antwerp stocks 16% below their five-year average and US inventories at their lowest for this time of year since records began.

Ireland is also keeping its "temporary" emergency gas generators running to 2028 and 2029, an extension the CRU says will add €229m in costs and roughly €30 to average bills. Perigus Energy's chief warned in Hamburg that political volatility and unclear post-2030 policy are deterring renewable investment, even as his company pushes toward 200MW reaching final investment decision this year. Industry figures separately renewed calls for a revived Irish REIT regime to help fund the billions still needed for grid and housing delivery.

Watch whether Russia extends its diesel export ban again past October, which would push European fuel costs higher still.

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

Friday – The Week in Summary…

It was a week of big numbers and some fairly sharp contrasts. Google was hit with a €403m DPC fine, we heard that the Daft/DoneDeal group was valued at €627.4m in its 2024 restructuring, Microsoft put Irish generative-AI usage at 49.9% of the working-age Irish population, and Irish pharma and medtech goods sales were shown to have doubled to €211bn since 2019. Business expansion kept showing up too, from Glanua’s US push and Squarespace’s extra €70m for Ireland to Citi’s €570m Dublin headquarters. Against that, legal-aid disruption, pressure on office valuations, aircraft-leasing tax concerns and today’s projected €1bn HSE overspend were reminders that plenty of unresolved costs and policy questions are following those growth stories around.

Ivan Yates has had another career change. A week after appearing in the property pages of all things, the former minister, bookmaker, bankrupt and broadcaster is now promoting a self-help book, The Game of Life and How to Win It. He discussed in a brutally honest podcast with Daniel McConnell, who replaced him on Path to Power after Yates was fired by Matt Cooper. At least the reinvention chapter should be well researched.

Eir is attempting its own update next month by retiring 3G, starting in Donegal before moving county by county towards 4G and 5G. What a nostalgic reminder of the days of holding your phone in the air hoping for 3G to remember your connectivity needs.

And if that sounds exhausting, Irish Talter's Curated offers recovery options: a €180 Montenotte tasting dinner, Belfast’s top-ranked independent coffee shop, Avoca coats woven in Wicklow, a €24 lip mask and a €75 Merit x Erdem set. Reinvention comes in many forms, or so Ivan would suggest, at least.

The Read – Business Post (Requires Paid Subscription) – Ryanair Wants You To See It As A Global Giant, Not Just A European One

Ryanair's AGM slide claiming "World's No.2 Airline" behind only American Airlines was new positioning, and Bank of America has just backed the underlying confidence with an upgraded €1.7bn net income forecast for 2027. Analysts point to elevated oil prices actually widening Ryanair's cost advantage, with unit costs of €36 per passenger against €90 at EasyJet and €253 at Air France KLM. Michael O'Leary predicts more European rivals will fail outright. Together the pieces explain why Ryanair is reframing its scale story just as fuel costs reshape the competitive field around it. Link: Ryanair Wants You To See It As A Global Giant, Not Just A European One

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