💼Jobs, fuel & big money moves

27 August 2026

Good morning. Jobs are under pressure at Kneat and Aer Lingus, Harvey Nichols is leaving Dundrum and Government has finally put dates on the return of higher fuel excise. There’s also big money moving through Eir, Analog and the Deal Desk, while Health & Pharma looks at where the sector’s investment is actually landing. Let’s get into it.

1. Workforce Pressure Lands At Kneat And Aer Lingus. Limerick software firm Kneat is proposing cuts affecting up to 10% of its roughly 350 staff, just weeks after its acquisition by Thoma Bravo, with Irish roles expected to be affected. At Aer Lingus, Fórsa says it will oppose compulsory redundancies and argues the formal consultation process has not properly begun, while the airline maintains it is meeting its legal obligations. Different companies, same immediate issue in that profitable businesses are still asking staff to absorb the next round of restructuring.

2. Getting Around Is About To Get More Complicated. Government will now phase out the temporary fuel-excise reductions between November and the end of February, replacing Monday’s immediate tax-rise problem with a slower one. Irish Ferries and Stena are also introducing passport or passport-card requirements on certain Ireland-UK routes from 28 September. While neither is dramatic alone, but motoring and crossing the Irish Sea are both getting a little less frictionless.

3. Harvey Nichols Is Leaving Dundrum. The Harvey Nichols store at Dundrum Town Centre is expected to close around 13 September after Frasers Group and the centre failed to agree terms to keep it trading. The Irish store was excluded from Frasers’ wider acquisition of the retailer. Dundrum remains one of Ireland’s strongest shopping centres, which makes losing a luxury anchor rather more notable than another high-street closure.

4. Eir Grows While The Bigger Money Moves Elsewhere. Eir’s second-quarter revenue rose 6% to €336m, with EBITDA up 4% to €155m. Analog Devices’ Irish operation recorded more than $10bn in revenue as wider filings show over €5.4bn in dividends moving towards its US parent. Boston Scientific has also reorganised reserves so up to $15bn could eventually be distributed from its Irish IP company to its Dutch parent and then the US. Serious money still runs through Ireland, even when it does not stay here.

5. Flood Insurance Could Get A National Levy. Insurance Ireland wants a €24 annual household levy to help fund cover for properties exposed to flooding, with Central Bank research suggesting around 5% of households struggle to obtain insurance. Government has not agreed the proposal, but the problem is becoming harder to leave to individual insurers. Without cover, flood risk eventually becomes a mortgage, property-value and saleability problem for households, and a financing and operating-cost problem for businesses trying to insure premises in higher-risk areas.

US inflation stayed stubborn at 3.7% in July, with markets now pricing another Fed rate rise by year-end as businesses face little relief on borrowing costs. Nvidia forecast $108bn in quarterly revenue, ahead of the average estimate, but its shares still slipped as investors demanded even more from the AI boom. Iran and Oman are discussing a temporary shipping corridor through Hormuz, helping Brent ease towards $87.50, although no reopening has been agreed. In Europe, ECB policymaker Isabel Schnabel said further rate rises will be needed as energy costs keep inflation elevated but that should be the last of it. Meta, meanwhile, has agreed a US settlement worth up to $16.7bn over alleged harms to children, pending court approval.

Health & Pharma

Health & Pharma this week is less about breakthrough drugs and more about who is actually writing cheques, with Irish deal activity outpacing the big obesity drugs story for once.

That builds on last week's news that occupational healthcare group Medmark landed a roughly €70m investment from UK's Phoenix Equity Partners, background that continues to shape how Irish healthcare consolidation is being financed.

The fresher signal came from Limerick, where medtech ChromWatch is targeting a €700,000 raise due to close later this year, adding to €550,000 raised since its 2024 founding at the University of Limerick. Its three-person team, spun out by engineer Luke Gallagher and biopharma-trained brothers Emmet and John O'Reilly, has built an analytical platform on desktop-scale NMR technology that tells biopharma manufacturers exactly what is going wrong in their processing lines, styling itself the "Google Maps for biopharma." It completed its first paid pilot last year, hopes for a first commercial customer early next year, and is in discussions with potential clients in Switzerland, the UK and the US, supported by Enterprise Ireland.

Globally, a Business Post review this week found Novo Nordisk has effectively written off six of sixteen major pharmaceutical acquisitions made since 2016, with two more now on the brink of failure after disappointing trial results. The pattern underlines how expensive and uncertain the race to defend its weight-loss franchise has become, with the semaglutide patent cliff approaching in the early 2030s and rivals like Lilly closing in.

Watch whether ChromWatch converts any of its international pilot conversations into a signed commercial contract before year end.

In Friday’s Tá, the Sector Spotlight will be Property & Energy.

Thursday - The Deal Desk…

SYS Financial: Announced the acquisition of CJK Financial Planning, its seventh since January, taking client assets under management above €1.3bn as consolidation in Irish financial advice continues.

Imprint: The Irish-founded fintech secured $2bn in new debt-funding capacity, comprising $1.5bn of additional warehouse capacity and a $500m asset-backed securitisation, giving it more room to scale its corporate card programmes.

Entity: The Irish gaming startup raised €5m in seed funding led by ACT Venture Capital, Delta Partners and Elkstone, with Enterprise Ireland and angel investors also participating, ahead of its platform's planned launch next year.

Vanguard: Agreed to acquire US fintech Altruist. Terms were not disclosed, although the deal is reportedly worth around $4bn, as Vanguard pushes further into technology serving financial advisers.

Apple has set 9 September for its next launch, with a foldable iPhone still expected to feature. When you flip open your new phone and are ready for entertainment, The Business Post’s watch list includes Ridley Scott’s The Dog Stars, Pedro Almodóvar’s Bitter Christmas and Judi Dench and Ian McKellen swapping stories on Sky/NOW.

Back at work, researchers say temperature, lighting and open-plan noise can all hurt concentration, so the office thermostat war has finally acquired academic backing.

Dolly Parton died on Tuesday, 25 August, aged 80, leaving behind the music, generosity and more than 300 million books distributed through her Imagination Library. Her final song, My Place in History, stays locked away until 2046. Best of luck to whoever is still opening the Tá by then.

The Read – Business Post (requires free account) – Big Tech gets the headlines, but Irish startups are the real story

Newstalk's Jess Kelly steps back from the AI headline cycle to make the case for Ireland's own startup ecosystem, drawing on recent time spent with founders in Dublin and Galway. Her strongest observation is regional with Galway quietly becoming one of Europe's premier medtech and deeptech clusters, built on tight integration between engineers, clinicians and academic researchers. Irish founders, she argues, design for global markets from day one out of necessity, which sharpens them against competitors caught off guard by macro shifts. A useful corrective to an AI-dominated news week, even if the underlying observations are a week old. Link: Big Tech gets the headlines, but Irish startups are the real story

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