Friday

26 June 2026

Good morning. Ireland is closing the week with food costs moving from forecasts to supermarket shelves, regulators getting closer to how products are priced and sold, and Dublin land still attracting big money where the business case is strong enough. Abroad, one attack near Oman was enough to put oil risk back into the conversation. Let’s get into it.

1. Food Costs Move From Forecasts To Shelves. ESRI has lifted its inflation forecast again, with food and fuel doing the awkward work, while families are still facing grocery price pressure. Add small suppliers warning they fear being pulled from supermarket shelves if they speak out, and the food story isn’t just a household bill. It is now about who is the price-maker, who absorbs the margin, and who people blame once the face the bill at the till.

2. Regulators Are Getting Into The Checkout. Ryanair has changed its family seating policy after UK competition scrutiny, while Irish firms are being warned that new packaging rules are closing in. Different sectors, same point: consumer-facing rules are moving from legal into pricing, labelling, and booking processes. The cost is not just the compliance; it is changing how ordinary products are sold.

3. PTSB Moves Forward, But Not Cleanly. The CCPC has cleared Bawag’s proposed €1.6bn takeover of PTSB, but the deal still needs shareholder approval, with the EGM due on 30 July. An appeal linked to a shareholder challenge is also due in early July. Ireland’s retail banking market is moving toward another ownership reset, but the next steps sit with shareholders, judges and regulators, not just deal makers.

4. Live Nation Bets Bigger On Dublin. Live Nation is planning a major music and sports venue in Dublin Docklands after a reported €90m site deal, with a proposed 20,000-capacity arena costing about €500m. This is not just another property play: Live Nation is also tied into MCD, Ireland’s largest live music and events promoter, through the LN-Gaiety structure. Add rising building costs and Greystar’s €37m student-block deal, and Dublin space is still attracting money, but only where the business case is big enough.

5. Digital Trust Is Becoming A Product Feature. The State’s digital wallet plan has drawn warnings about privacy, cyber risk and how much personal data should sit in one official app, while separate research says 86% of businesses rely on assumptions about customer preferences rather than direct feedback. Add audio advertising’s push for clearer return on spend, and the pattern is concrete: firms are being judged on how they collect data, prove value and make people comfortable to click, share, or buy – the essentials of the digital world.

Oil rose about 2% after Singapore-flagged, Ever Lovely, ship was attacked near Oman, forcing the UN’s maritime agency to pause Hormuz ship-evacuation work and cutting across earlier relief that tanker traffic was recovering. The US-Iran ceasefire now has a shipping problem, not just a diplomatic one. Apple has raised some MacBook and iPad prices, while Micron’s results lifted chip stocks and put AI’s memory bottleneck back in focus. Europe’s heatwave is stretching health systems and power demand, while air-con makers enjoy the only cheerful version of 40-degree weather. Lower oil had eased ECB rate fears; one ship attack shows how quickly that comfort can be repriced.

Property & Energy

It was a week when the data caught up with what estate agents have been feeling for months… Dublin's housing market is turning.

Ireland's house price story has quietly flipped, even as European peers still wrestle with higher ECB rates. Daft.ie's latest Sales Report found Dublin transaction prices fell 2.3% in the year to June, the capital's first annual decline since 2023, while national list-price inflation eased to 3.8% from 6.8%. Economist Ronan Lyons calls it a "two-speed market": cities cooling as supply recovers, while Munster and Connacht-Ulster prices still climb 6.3% and 8.8%, and the second-hand market remains stuck even as new-build sales rose 17%. For Irish buyers, timing now depends heavily on where in the country you're looking.

Closer to the legal side, the long tail of the financial crash resurfaced this week: the UK's Upper Tribunal ruled that a Northern Irish property group could not deduct £33.5 million in NAMA-era debt payments from its UK tax bill, rejecting the claim that NAMA's threat to withhold a release document had caused the payment. It's a reminder that NAMA's own unwinding still produces legal aftershocks more than a decade on.

Investor appetite for prime Dublin sites held up regardless: Savills and CBRE brought an 8.65-acre Cherrywood site to market this week at a €40 million guide price for King Street Capital Management and Hines, proof institutional money still wants Dublin's biggest strategic development zone despite higher financing costs.

The pattern is a market splitting by geography, not slowing everywhere at once, while crisis-era debts keep resurfacing in courtrooms years after the deals closed. Watch whether Dublin's price dip deepens through Q3, and how households absorb Electric Ireland's price rises landing on bills from July 1st.

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

Friday – The Week in Summary…

Ireland spent the week proving that growth is still there, but the operating costs are getting harder to hide. Rural investment, CRH’s $8.5bn Arcosa deal, Trading 212’s Dublin plans and Live Nation’s Docklands arena push showed capital still moving. Diageo, the Central Bank, the HSE, food suppliers, builders and data-centre users showed the other side: staff, power, regulation, margins and delivery are now deciding what that capital can actually do.

PwC has renewed its GAA/GPA sponsorship for a further three years, backing the PwC All-Stars (football and hurling) and PwC Camogie All-Stars, plus the Player of the Month awards across men's and women's Gaelic games. Useful timing, because Dublin also spent the week watching DART disruption remind everyone that elite movement is not guaranteed off the pitch. Add lawyers arguing over whether Yamamori’s former nightclub counts as a cultural institution, and Ireland has a tidy Friday syllabus: sport is culture, transport is drama, and late bars are apparently jurisprudence.

The Read – BusinessPlus – Ralph van Dijk on why audio campaigns still work

Ralph van Dijk’s argument is useful because it treats audio advertising as a performance channel, not just brand noise. He makes the case that strong campaigns need distinctive sound, clear brand memory and proper measurement, especially when attention is fragmented across radio, podcasts, streaming and social clips. For Irish brands trying to prove marketing spend, the lesson is simple enough: if people can hear you but cannot remember you, the media plan is doing only half the job. Link: Ralph van Dijk on why audio campaigns still work

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