Monday's Newsletter

Good morning. Ryanair has profits but shareholder patience isn’t there, SMEs are hiring but not evenly, housing is improving but not enough, and AI regulation is arriving before half the country has worked out what “deployment” actually means. Elsewhere, G7 finance chiefs are trying to calm markets while politics, oil and bond yields behave like they missed the email. Let’s get into it.

1. Ryanair’s Profit Still Got Punished. Ryanair made €2.26bn after tax and carried 208.4m passengers in the last year, but shares have continued to fall as fares softened and fuel, wages and green levies clouded guidance. Great business but ugly mood music at the minute. For anyone reading markets, the lesson is blunt: investors now punish uncertainty faster than they reward record profits.

2. Jobs Are Growing, But Not Evenly.  Irish SMEs are hiring at their fastest pace in nearly a decade, while Irish workers rank highly for employer-backed training. The split is the catch: domestic firms look steadier; exporters are absorbing more pain. Early-career workers should follow the training budget, because the next pay jump will belong to people whose skills compound.

3. Housing Supply Is Better, But Still Lacking. Sherry FitzGerald expects 2026 homebuilding to match or beat 2025, after the strongest first quarter for completions since 2011. But listings remain painfully thin and demand is still running ahead of supply. Your salary may rise this year; the housing market may still outrun it.

4. Ireland Needs More Trade Exits. Ibec wants Ireland’s EU presidency used to push new trade deals, while Canada is courting Irish and European firms with a message: its market is open, stable and actively looking for international entrepreneurs. That matters when US trade looks jumpy and tariffs keep appearing in boardroom nightmares. If your business has only one export bet/supply route/sales market, 2026 is the year to build a second.

5. Hospitality’s Staffing Model Is Cracking. University of Galway research points to unpaid hours, minimum-wage breaches and high stress in hospitality. That is not just a sector problem; it is a warning for any business relying on young, flexible staff to absorb chaos. Bad labour practices are becoming operational risk, not just background noise.

G7 finance chiefs are in Paris trying to put manners on inflation, debt and war costs, just as bond markets weaken and oil rises on Iran fears. Ukraine says long-range drones struck the Moscow region, bringing the war’s risk map closer to Russia’s capital. Taiwan’s president warned the island will not be “sacrificed or traded”, a pointed message after another US-China reset. In London, Wes Streeting has reportedly set out plans to take over Labour’s leadership if Starmer falls, which makes No 10’s denials sound increasingly procedural. The global mood: markets want discipline, politics wants drama, and neither seems especially interested in waiting its turn.

Tech & AI

The sector arrives at Google I/O week carrying more regulatory weight than product excitement, and for Ireland, that distinction matters more than most.

The EU reached a political agreement on 7 May on the AI Omnibus, trimming the original AI Act's compliance burden. The deal extends simplified requirements to small and mid-cap companies and broadens access to regulatory sandboxes. For multinationals headquartered in Dublin, the practical question is timing: August 2nd is when the full compliance framework for high-risk AI systems comes into force.

Ireland's enforcement architecture is still being assembled to meet that deadline. The AI Office of Ireland will coordinate 15 sectoral regulators, ranging from the Central Bank to the Workplace Relations Commission. Companies with AI touching multiple sectors face the prospect of parallel supervisory conversations before any of those bodies have established track records.

The domestic readiness picture adds a further complication. A Microsoft Ireland report found that while AI adoption is near-universal, just 10% of organisations describe their deployment as advanced, with SMEs disproportionately stuck at early stages. Widespread adoption and meaningful deployment are not the same thing, and regulators will increasingly treat that distinction as consequential.

Google I/O opens tomorrow, where the central question is not whether Google will discuss AI, but whether its offering remains competitive. With Google's European cloud infrastructure anchored in Ireland, whatever direction Gemini takes this week will have direct relevance here.

The August deadline, the SME maturity gap, and the agentic push expected from Google I/O are all pointing at the same problem: Irish organisations must move from adoption to deployment under a framework still finding its feet. Whether the AI Office of Ireland can issue meaningful guidance before it has formally opened will be the first real test of that ambition.

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

Monday – The Weekend Round Up…

Friday's US-China summit produced nothing on the Strait of Hormuz, triggering a sharp global bond selloff: the 30-year Treasury yield hit 5% for the first time in two decades as markets priced in war-driven inflation. European equities open lower this morning. Ryanair reported a 40% profit jump to €2.26 billion, though O'Leary flagged fares easing on consumer uncertainty around fuel costs and the CFO separately warned that weaker European carriers may not survive a prolonged jet fuel crunch. And Irish chartered accountant John Hourican was appointed CFO of private equity giant CVC Capital Partners (part owners of the Six Nations), taking the role from September.

RTÉ now has 171 staff earning over €100,000, while UCD is celebrating a top-10 UK and Ireland business-school ranking and Trinity’s scholarship data has reopened the old private-school advantage row. So, a very Irish education-to-public-pay pipeline, really: study hard, network harder, and one day someone may complain about your salary under Freedom of Information. The national dream lives on.

The Read – The Irish Times – Clever people understand the value of exchanging pleasantries at work

Pilita Clark’s argument lands because it treats office small talk as workplace infrastructure, not filler between “real” work. She makes the case that casual chat is how people pick up context, trust, warnings and useful gossip, all the things the likes of Slack pretend to organise. For hybrid teams, junior staff and managers trying to spot problems before they become meetings, this could be a useful reminder to actually have a casual chat with one another. Link: https://www.irishtimes.com/business/work/2026/05/18/the-many-joys-of-small-talk/

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