Tuesday

07 July 2026

Good morning. Microsoft has put Irish roles on watch, unemployment has edged higher and the rest of Tuesday’s slate is about whether Ireland can keep building homes, start-ups and funds work included. Let’s get into it.

1. Microsoft Makes The Jobs Market Less Comfortable. Microsoft is cutting about 4,800 jobs globally and has informed Government that Irish-based roles may be affected. Separately, unemployment rose to 5% in June, up from 4.9% in May and 4.6% a year earlier. Ireland’s jobs market is still not weak, but the multinational comfort blanket is thinner when global tech groups start resetting costs.

2. Housing Delivery Moves Into Procurement. Dublin City Council is seeking contractors for a four-year, €2.5bn programme to build 4,000 social and affordable homes. MyHome says asking prices rose 5% between April and June, keeping pressure on buyers while public supply still has to move through builders, sites and timelines. The target is homes, but today’s news is the machinery behind getting them built.

3. Irish Funds Get A Bigger Number. PwC says Ireland’s asset and wealth management industry could reach $9tn, about €7.9tn, by 2030, up from $5.2tn at the end of 2024. The forecast leans on demand for EU market access, ETF growth, UCITS distribution and private-market expertise. That makes Dublin’s funds story bigger than assets under management: it is legal, tax, compliance and servicing work with a long runway.

4. Start-Ups Are Still Forming. Vision-net by CRIF says 14,949 companies were established in Ireland in the first half of 2026, up 13% year-on-year and the strongest half-year on record. IT start-ups rose 62%, while construction, manufacturing and motoring also grew. Formation is not the same as survival, but it does show domestic business confidence has not disappeared under higher costs and global noise.

5. Farm Incomes Recovered, For Now. Teagasc says average farm income rose 49% to more than €53,800 in 2025, with income up across all major farm systems after a difficult 2023. Cattle-finishing farms saw average income rise 81% to about €32,800. Useful, but not a blank cheque for 2026: farm economics still depend on commodity prices, input costs and whether last year’s recovery can hold.

EasyJet’s board has agreed in principle to Castlelake’s £6.90-a-share proposal, valuing the airline at about £5.5bn, but the US investor still has until 3 August to make a formal offer and EU ownership rules remain a live hurdle. Wall Street moved higher as AMD and other chip names lifted the AI trade, while European shares struggled for direction after briefly touching record territory. In Geneva, the UN opened an AI governance summit with António Guterres warning that rulemaking is still chasing the technology. In the UK, Andy Burnham’s circle is split over how hard to push Labour on the cost-of-living crisis, keeping Westminster’s economic argument close to the surface.

Legal & Regulatory

A week when policy intention met professional resistance, as the legal aid standoff the Minister insisted would not happen did.

Jim O'Callaghan's flat-fee criminal legal aid scheme went live on Wednesday, with up to 60 solicitors walking out of Dublin District Court and around 20 in Cork formally resigning from the panel, adjourning every criminal case in both Cork courts. O'Callaghan declared himself "not for turning" on Friday despite an Oireachtas Committee calling for a halt, having raised the proposed fee from €455 to €520 before launch. The Law Society's exodus warning carries weight: a comparable flat-fee change in family law drove widespread departures from that panel.

The Employment (Contractual Retirement Ages) Act, in force only since June 29th, gained an early illustration this week: the WRC awarded Cork seamstress Mary Kenneally more than €75,000 after finding that Carr Sewing Machines falsely invoked a mandatory retirement age and systematically cut her hours to force her out after 17 years' service. The case is precisely the conduct the new law is designed to address.

An Coimisiún Pleanála recorded 51 new planning judicial reviews in H1 2026, down from 88 in H1 2025, as legislation capping litigant costs beds in; O'Callaghan has committed to the Civil Reform Bill by Q4. Bar of Ireland chair Sean Guerin complicated the framing: most planning JRs are brought by developers, not objectors.

Browne Jacobson and Addleshaw Goddard posted record revenues this week; DLA Piper promoted 12 in Ireland: commercial legal work keeps expanding regardless of the access-to-justice fight in the District Courts.

In Wednesday’s Tá, the Sector Spotlight will be Finance & Markets.

Tuesday – On the Move…

DAA, CEO search: Five months after Kenny Jacobs departed, the airport operator still has no advertised permanent CEO, leaving a major semi-State succession call unresolved.

Ronan Kelly, Digital Infrastructure Ireland: The former AllPoints Fibre Networks boss took up the CEO role on 1 July, giving Ireland’s data-centre lobby a new lead voice.

Rob Hutcheson, Lanas: The Dublin healthcare tech group has made the 15-year M&A specialist Chief Corporate Development Officer as it eyes acquisitions across the UK, Ireland and ANZ.

Karla Dunne, Dogs Trust Ireland: The long-serving Executive Director has been confirmed as CEO, an internal step-up as the charity pushes a more measurable, impact-led direction.

Ireland's EU Presidency is being marked with a commemorative €2 coin, because nothing says “rules-based European leadership” quite like checking to see if you've got the limited edition the next time you see a coin. After a week of funds forecasts, housing procurement and AI governance, there is something nicely Irish about diplomacy arriving in loose change. Brussels gets the speeches; we get the fun new coin.

The Read – RTÉ – "The ups and downs of the Deposit Return Scheme"

Three billion containers returned, a record 5.8 million in a single day, and a public row this week between Re-turn's CEO and the waste management industry over whether the machines actually recycle better than your household bin. Small retailers say they are losing money running the scheme while the operator's senior team took home a combined €1.1 million in 2024. The numbers are impressive. The politics underneath it are worth knowing. The Link: The ups and downs of the Deposit Return Scheme

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