📅Q4 starts with a podcast, SAP’s €1bn-plus Irish consolidation, and industrial action

01 October 2026

Good morning. Q4 starts with SAP simplifying a €1bn-plus Irish operation, public-sector industrial action now underway and data-centre operators pushing back hard on new grid rules. House prices are cooling, infrastructure timelines are improving, and Worth Your Time has a strong listen with UCD president Orla Feely on funding, talent and running one of Ireland’s biggest universities. Let’s get into it.

1. SAP Puts Its Irish Operation Under One Roof. SAP has consolidated two of its Irish entities into its main Dublin-based subsidiary, creating a business with a book value of more than €1bn. The German software giant employs around 2,000 people here, while SAP Ireland reported 2025 revenue of €881m, operating profit of almost €499m and paid €151m in Irish taxes. It is a sizeable simplification of an already sizeable Irish operation.

2. Public Sector Industrial Action Is Now Underway. More than 100,000 public-sector workers began work-to-rule action yesterday across health, education, local authorities and the civil service as the dispute over a new pay deal escalated. Fórsa, SIPTU and INMO members are among those taking part, while doctors will join a nationwide strike on 14 October. What had been weeks of ballots and warnings is now an operational problem for public services.

3. Data Centre Giants Push Back On New Grid Rules. Data-centre operators are warning that new CRU requirements could force expensive retrofits, with Cloud Infrastructure Ireland saying some of the equipment needed to keep existing sites connected during certain grid faults is not commercially available and raising concerns about how derogations will work. Operators now have six months to submit compliance plans. That sits awkwardly beside yesterday’s more upbeat argument from Irish data-centre services companies that the sector’s grid challenges are manageable and that years of engineering, construction and manufacturing expertise can still be exported even if development here slows.

4. Higher Rates Are Starting To Show Up In House Prices. Irish house-price growth slowed in the third quarter, with Sherry FitzGerald reporting second-hand values up 1.1% between July and September and 4.4% over the year. Higher borrowing costs are weighing on purchasing power, while first-half second-hand transactions fell 2.3%. New-home transactions moved the other way, rising 20.4%. Supply remains tight, but dearer money is putting a more visible brake on price growth.

5. Infrastructure Speeds Up As EV Grant Controls Fall Short. Government says Waterford’s wastewater project will arrive 26 weeks earlier, helped by changes to procurement and commissioning that allow parts of the project to progress in parallel rather than sequentially, while Greater Dublin Drainage could be completed about a year sooner. The contrast comes from EV supports, where the C&AG found dealerships were overpaid by up to €3.9m after State-aid limits were incorrectly applied across linked companies. Delivery is getting quicker in one part of the State while another is trying to recover money already paid out.

Iran’s grip on the Strait of Hormuz is weakening, with crude shipments over the past week back to 77% of pre-war levels as Saudi Arabia and the UAE reroute more oil through pipelines and the Red Sea. That does not mean the energy risk has gone away because the White House is considering curbs on US diesel exports to contain domestic fuel prices, and allies including the UK have been warned about possible disruption. UK borrowing costs are also climbing, with a £4.25bn sale of 10-year gilts clearing at 5.38%, the highest yield since 1999. BMW plans to cut around a fifth of senior management roles as it expands AI use, while the US FTC is preparing to demand information from OpenAI, Anthropic and other AI firms over product safety and cybersecurity concerns.

Health & Pharma

Health & Pharma has moved from threatened disruption to live industrial action, while the HSE's finances come under pressure at the same time.

More than 100,000 public servants began a work-to-rule on Wednesday, with INMO nurses refusing unpaid extra hours and non-clinical meetings. Psychiatric nurses join today and teachers on Monday. The Irish Medical Organisation stops work on October 14 until 5pm, then works to rule from October 15 until further notice, with a second day of action planned for October 21. Jack Chambers has offered talks directly or through the Workplace Relations Commission. Fórsa's Kevin Callinan says his refusal to discuss pay made action inevitable.

HSE chief financial officer Michael Lane told the Public Accounts Committee that about €140m of lost private insurance income, as consultants move to private-only contracts, is one factor behind a projected €1bn overspend. Agency spending is expected to exceed €800m and will face new controls. An internal audit found almost €4m in duplicate payments to more than 2,400 GPs between 2021 and 2023, mostly recouped, exposing weak real-time payment validation.

For industry, a McCann FitzGerald pre-Budget note from earlier this month argues that sub-contracting rules stop firms claiming many clinical-trial costs, leaving Ireland behind Denmark. It wants offshore connected-party R&D to qualify, capped at 100% of domestic spend, on top of the 35% credit. That is a lobbying request, not policy. Poolbeg Pharma says it is funded to the second quarter of 2028, after a positive interim safety review of its cancer-drug trial.

Watch whether formal talks open, directly or through the WRC, before the October 14 stoppage.

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

Thursday - The Deal Desk…

Kingspan / BMC Manufacturing: Kingspan completed its acquisition of Meath-based BMC Manufacturing Group for €850m upfront, with up to another €50m tied to profit targets. BMC designs and manufactures power systems for data centres and is expected to generate around €280m of revenue this year.

Quintas Capital / Zenith Childcare: Dublin-based Quintas Capital completed a €15m-plus investment in Zenith Childcare, predominantly backed by Irish investors. The growth capital is intended to help Zenith expand from five crèches and around 450 places to more than 1,500 places nationally.

Ires Reit / Barings: Barings’ fifth proposal values Ires at €1.386 per share, with the Ires board saying it would be minded to recommend an all-cash offer at that level. It remains a possible takeover rather than a completed transaction.

UPS / TikTok Shop: UPS has signed an exclusive agreement to handle no-box, no-label returns for TikTok Shop’s US sellers as it expands further into higher-margin reverse logistics.

M&S / Sephora: Marks & Spencer has partnered with LVMH-owned Sephora to bring its products into 100 UK locations through a shop-in-shop model, alongside a wider range on M&S.com.

Football finance is having quite the week. Manchester City earned nearly £1.1bn in Premier League and UEFA prize money during the period covered by its financial-rule charges, including £358m from the Champions League alone. Closer to home, billionaire Philip O’Doherty put another €4.33m into Derry City and has committed €2.92m more for 2026 to keep the club operating at its current level, hopefully without the League of Ireland discovering a decade from now that all of Derry's second-place finishes need stripping. Then there was Naas, where people queued from 3am at Applegreen’s new €15m M7 service area for the chance to win a year of free Popeyes or Taco Bell. At least one of this week’s prize-money competitions had fairly straightforward rules.

The Listen - Business Post - €1bn revenue, 40,000 students and a place in the top 100: Orla Feely on running UCD

UCD's president, Orla Feely, discusses running an institution with more than 40,000 students, revenues approaching €1bn and a place among the world's top 100 universities. Now three years into her tenure as the university's first female provost, she tells Daniel McConnell about the third-level funding crisis, how she divides her time between students and donors, and how Ireland's reputation has changed in Silicon Valley. It is a timely listen for anyone weighing education funding, talent supply and fundraising ahead of Budget 2027. The episode is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube and the Business Post site. Link: €1bn revenue, 40,000 students and a place in the top 100: Orla Feely on running UCD

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