Ireland's biggest landlord moving to British ownership?

28 September 2026

Good morning. BNY is hiring hundreds of people in Dublin as it targets 30% headcount growth, while Ires Reit, Ireland’s largest private landlord, has moved closer to a potential sale after its board said it would be minded to recommend Barings’ latest offer. Elsewhere, Budget 2027 continues taking shape, energy costs are hitting hiring and investment, and AI is being asked to show where the returns actually are.

Monday - The Weekend Round-Up…

The weekend was heavy on money moving and warnings being issued.

BNY is hiring for hundreds of new Dublin roles as it targets 30% headcount growth, backing up its recent purchase of a new Irish headquarters on Sir John Rogerson's Quay. Mortgage approvals hit a record €1.7bn in August, the strongest on record for the month, while credit union lending pushed past €6.84bn and total assets topped €20bn for the first time. ESB said it may sell assets to help fund its €20bn investment programme, even as a decision on its Oriel offshore wind farm slipped past its expected date. Retail chiefs at Boots, Musgrave, Aldi and Lidl warned government there's a limit to the costs they can absorb before it hits jobs and investment, ahead of Budget 2027. The CCPC raided solar panel firms suspected of bid-rigging on public tenders. At the CIF's Croke Park conference, industry figures said Ireland is "on the cusp" of a data centre delivery turning point, though higher energy bills may follow.

Elsewhere, space stocks extended a brutal slide, Monzo entered early talks with Nubank over a possible £10bn sale, and Volkswagen confirmed a 2.86 million-vehicle global recall, though VW Ireland says as few as 14 Irish cars are affected.

1. Ires Moves Closer To A Barings Offer. Ires Reit says a fifth proposal from London-based Barings, worth €1.386 per share, is at a level its board would be minded to recommend. It is an offer, not a completed deal, but that is still a meaningful step forward in the process. After years of pressure around Irish residential property valuations, one of the market’s biggest listed landlords is now firmly in play.

2. Budget 2027 Starts Putting Numbers On Tax And Pay. The Government is reportedly preparing changes across all three inheritance-tax thresholds, while about €2bn is expected to be set aside for a new public-sector pay agreement if talks succeed. Neither measure is final yet. The inheritance-tax changes would widen what families can pass on tax-free, while the €2bn reserve gives the pay talks a defined funding envelope ahead of Budget day.

3. Credit Unions Get A Route Into The New Investment Accounts. Credit unions could refer members to authorised Savings and Investment Account providers and charge for the service under the model being finalised by Government. The sector holds about €18.7bn in member savings, while the full SIA framework is due with Budget 2027 on 6 October. The practical question is shifting from whether Ireland gets more retail investing to how people will actually access it.

4. Energy Costs Are Reaching Hiring And Investment Decisions. More than half of firms in an Azets Ireland survey said elevated energy prices had caused them to pause hiring, while almost half had delayed investment or expansion. Separate RTÉ calculations show how fuel, heating, electricity and higher mortgage costs are also feeding household pressure. Higher energy costs are now directly affecting recruitment, expansion plans and household spending power.

5. Irish Capital Backs A Bigger Childcare Platform. Dublin-based Quintas Capital has completed an investment of more than €15m in Zenith Childcare, funded predominantly by Irish investors. Zenith currently operates five crèches with about 450 places and plans to expand capacity beyond 1,500 over the coming years. It is a useful example of private capital moving into a sector where the commercial opportunity and the national capacity shortage are unusually easy to see.

Oil and bonds are back under pressure after Donald Trump rejected Iran’s latest proposal around reopening the Strait of Hormuz, with Brent rising above $106 a barrel and the US 10-year Treasury yield reaching about 5.2%. Taiwan is pushing back against Beijing’s account of the Second World War as China presses Washington on Taiwan policy ahead of further US-China talks. Australian gold miner Northern Star has rejected a reported A$38.7bn takeover approach from Gold Fields, showing that consolidation interest in the gold sector remains strong despite this specific deal not getting over the line. Europe and Ireland start the week with the same immediate exposure with expensive energy, higher yields and geopolitical decisions feeding directly into financing costs and inflation.

Tech & AI

Tech & AI is being asked to prove its worth just as the money reaches its largest scale yet.

Gartner forecasts worldwide AI spending of $2.7 trillion in 2026, up 49.5% from $1.78 trillion, with almost half going to infrastructure. That is a forecast, not spending already made. At a Business Post panel, Tines chief executive Eoin Hinchy said only chat and software engineering are transformative, with other benefits debatable. According to legal filings, OpenAI said Apple's ChatGPT integration was "dramatically underperforming" by summer 2025. Microsoft has redesigned Copilot around a coding tool and an always-on agent. The FT reports Goldman Sachs earned more than $200m (€175.5m) in fees this year lending to AI hedge fund Situational Awareness.

The Irish evidence is about people and skills. Workday's Graham Abell cited its €175m AI centre of excellence and 250 planned jobs over three years. Workday research, with no Irish breakdown given, found nearly two-thirds of employees use AI daily but only 15% have had training. Monzo is set to take roughly 16,000 square feet at One Cumberland Place, enough for about 150 desks against a public target of 70 Irish staff by mid-2027, as EU chief Michael Carney prepares to step down for an AI and robotics start-up.

Digital Business Ireland warned the proposed EU Digital Fairness Act risks over-regulation and urged Ireland to avoid gold-plating, meaning adding national rules on top of EU ones.

Watch who Monzo names as Carney's successor, and whether its Dublin hiring moves towards the space it has leased.

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

Second acts were everywhere this weekend. Barry Napier won permission to rebuild his €7.5m Dalkey home in its original design, while 53-year-old Dublin kitchenware shop Stock is suddenly contemplating New York after Sarah Jessica Parker told it to open there. U2 went back to Mount Temple, and then Bewley's, to mark 50 years together, with a career that has sold more than 170m records and somehow still has the four original members sharing a stage. Christophe Fouquet, boss of Dutch chipmaker ASML, collected European Business Media’s manager-of-the-year award. Manchester City had a rather less celebratory weekend, having been found guilty on almost all Premier League financial-rule charges, although the club says the process remains ongoing. From Dalkey to Mount Temple, apparently longevity just means finding increasingly elaborate ways to keep the show on the road.

The Read – Business Post (Requires Paid Subscription) – Euronext couldn't fix the Irish Stock Exchange, so who can?

Euronext boss Stéphane Boujnah calls Ireland's shrinking equity market a "source of big frustration", with CRH, Flutter and Smurfit WestRock all gone to US listings since 2018. Bruegel's Nicolas Véron argues the real problem is fragmented supervision and patchy corporate enforcement, not the exchanges. Euronext is also pushing the Budget to scrap Ireland's 1% stamp duty on share transactions. Link: Euronext couldn't fix the Irish Stock Exchange, so who can?

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