Thursday

Good morning. Ireland is juggling challenging inflation outlooks, softer exports, pricier rooms and the next step towards fixing the Dublin Airport cap. Abroad, the US-Iran deal has moved from headline to fine print. Worth Your Time looks at why more Irish people are avoiding the news. Awkward timing, but we’ll press on. Let’s get into it.

1. Inflation Puts Pay And Budget Back Under Pressure. The Central Bank now expects Irish inflation of 3.5% this year and 2.9% in 2027, with energy costs still squeezing real wage growth. That lands straight into Budget talks, pay demands and business margins. The next round of budget supports will have to prove whether it is working to protect the people under pressure, or just making the bill look smaller.

2. Exports Fall As US Trade Cools. Irish exports fell again in April, with CSO figures showing exports to the US down 45.1% year-on-year to €5.1bn. Pharma swings can distort the numbers, but the direction still matters. Ireland’s export model is strong, but it is heavily exposed when US demand, tax planning, inventory cycles or pharma timing move against it; this emphasises the importance building the indigenous export market.

3. Experience Economy Gets A Capacity Test. Dublin City Council’s hotel, hostel and aparthotel levy is doubling from 1 July, raising the cost of adding rooms in a city already short on affordable accommodation. Meanwhile, BiggerStage’s €10m Troy Studios hub in Limerick shows the upside Ireland is trying to capture: productions, jobs and international attention. The demand is there; the question is whether the beds, prices and infrastructure can keep up.

4. Housing Sends Mixed Signals. Residential property price growth has cooled to its slowest rate in more than two years, while legal challenges to Dublin housing schemes reportedly fell 15% year-on-year in the first quarter. That is useful movement, not a solved problem. Slower price growth helps buyers on paper, but affordability still depends on supply, planning speed and homes actually reaching the market.

5. Airport Cap Bill Clears Government. Minister for Transport Darragh O’Brien has secured Government approval to publish the Dublin Airport Passenger Capacity Bill 2026, which would give him power to address the airport’s 32 million passenger cap. It now has to go through the Oireachtas, with environmental assessments and public consultation still part of the process before any order can amend or revoke the cap. The route is clearer; the cap is not gone yet.

Trump and Iran’s Masoud Pezeshkian have signed a preliminary US-Iran agreement, but the useful bit is the machinery. It declares an immediate halt to fighting, including in Lebanon, gives Iran oil-export and banking waivers, requires Hormuz traffic to be restored within 30 days, and ties wider sanctions relief to nuclear terms still to be negotiated over 60 days. That gives oil, freight and airline fuel a cleaner path, while leaving enforcement to do the hard work. Ukraine hit a Moscow refinery as Russia fired missiles at Kyiv, while Volodymyr Zelenskiy sought Trump-backed support for a peace deal in what Trump said were good talks. The UK is in advanced talks with Nissan over Sunderland support, keeping industrial policy close to home. Bezos says AI could create labour shortages by accelerating new industries, because apparently the future can still be understaffed, giving some hope against the AI backdrop.

Health & Pharma

It has been a week of structural housekeeping rather than headline drama in Irish health and pharma, with the system tightening its own architecture while the demographic pressures bearing down on it kept building underneath.

Globally, Big Pharma's slow exit from insulin is reshaping a $30bn market: Indian drugmaker Biocon is aiming to become the world's top insulin supplier, its co-founder Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw said, as Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly redirect resources toward GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy. There's an Irish footnote: Mazumdar-Shaw founded Biocon in 1978 as an industrial enzymes producer in a joint venture with an Irish company, a reminder of how long Irish capital has run through global biopharma. Separately, WHO chief Tedros and Brazilian president Lula jointly urged world leaders to finalise the Pandemic Agreement's pathogen access and benefit-sharing annex, the mechanism for sharing dangerous pathogen data so vaccines and treatments can be developed faster, with negotiators meeting from 6 to 17 July, a deadline that matters to Ireland's vaccine manufacturing base regardless of outcome.

At home, the HSE published its first Framework for Health Innovation on Wednesday, giving SMEs a single national pathway instead of fragmented regional pilots. It lands the same week Enoda, a UCD and Newcastle spin-out based in Cobh, launched a wearable data platform for clinical trials in Parkinson's and MS, exactly the kind of homegrown innovation the framework hopes to scale.

HIQA also published research suggesting Ireland's low-risk alcohol guidelines, unchanged since 2015, understate risk at low consumption and may not need sex-specific thresholds, feeding into a Department of Health review.

Underneath both, Ireland's ageing population kept pressing on funding: Fair Deal nursing home support has grown from €968m to €1.2bn annually, with ESRI modelling pointing to a further 60% rise in long-term care needs by 2040.

Together, this is a system building capacity before the demographic bill arrives in full. Watch the 17 July pathogen-sharing deadline globally, and the Department's response to HIQA's findings at home.

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

Thursday - The Deal Desk…

NewsWhip: Irish-founded media intelligence firm NewsWhip cut losses ahead of its reported €47m acquisition by Sprout Social, a reminder that exits are won in the numbers as well as the deal pitch.

Currenxie: Dublin and Hong Kong fintech Currenxie has secured SEPA participant status, strengthening its Irish-based European payments platform for SMEs moving money across borders.

Fox and Roku: Fox has agreed a $22bn cash and stock deal for Roku, buying streaming distribution, ad data and access to more than 100m households.

Einride: Swedish electric and autonomous trucking firm Einride jumped over 70% on its Nasdaq debut after its SPAC merger, showing public markets still have room for transport tech, not just rockets and AI.

Football coverage is being rebuilt for people who want the goal, the clip, the argument and the meme before the referee finds his whistle. The Rest Is Football fits that future; Fox got there via James Corden, because modern media law says he must appear wherever nobody expected him. Then the cost-of-living pieces arrive: Dublin is brutal for single people as Dublin named in list of Europe's most expensive capital cities. Highlights are getting shorter; bills remain stubbornly full-length.

The Read – Coimisiún na Meán and DCU FuJo – Digital News Report Ireland 2026

Free to download, it explains why Irish audiences still trust major brands while increasingly avoiding the news altogether.

The number to watch is 47%: the share of Irish people now actively avoiding news, up six points in a year. Overall trust has fallen to 42%, while trust among 18 to 24 year olds is just 33%, even as public service media still scores well with younger groups. Media, marketing, comms and public policy teams should read it before assuming attention is the same thing as loyalty.

Links to Listen: Digital News Report Ireland 2026

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