Tuesday

Good morning. Huge one this morning: Fin, formerly Intercom, is selling to Salesforce for $3.6bn, a must-read in the Top 5. Behind that, jobs, taxes, and housing are all in the mix. RTÉ Brainstorm explains why cheaper oil takes the scenic route to cheaper bills in Worth Your Time. Let’s get into it.

1. Fin (Intercom) Is Selling to Salesforce. Salesforce has signed a definitive agreement to purchase the Irish-founded customer agent company formerly known as Intercom, for about $3.6bn. This is the largest deal ever for an Irish-founded tech firm. It began in 2011 when Eoghan McCabe, Des Traynor, Ciaran Lee and David Barrett built a messaging feature into their bug-tracking app Exceptional to communicate with users. That feature became the business. After selling Exceptional to Rackspace, they used the proceeds to launch Intercom. Fin now resolves more than 2m conversations a week, has passed $400m in annual recurring revenue, and its AI agent is reported to account for around $100m of that. Founders and employees are set to share roughly half the price, creating a major payday for them for Irish people. The deal is signed, not closed yet; if completed, this will be a landmark Irish software exit.

2. BMC Adds 500 Irish Jobs. BMC Manufacturing, the Meath-founded electrical engineering company, will create more than 500 roles in Dublin and Meath by the end of 2028, across engineering, technology and operations. Enterprise Ireland also says its client companies exported a record €38.86bn in 2025, up 8%. The useful signal is not just Irish firms selling abroad; it is Irish suppliers getting paid as part of global infrastructure buildouts.

3. Budget Tax Pressure Builds. The Government is considering raising the point at which workers hit the higher income-tax rate, after Budget 2026 kept the threshold at €44,000, causing an effective tax increase. Simon Harris is also putting childcare and public-service reform into the Budget conversation. This is where cost-of-living politics gets harder: voters want permanent take-home pay relief, while the State still has housing, health and infrastructure bills to worry about.

4. Housing Pipeline Meets Cost Reality. Clúid is seeking builders for a framework worth up to €950m over four years, while Cairn says funding DART South West could unlock 65,300 homes. At the same time, construction inflation has reportedly nearly wiped out the benefit of the apartment VAT cut. The next housing debate is less about announcing capacity and more about viability to ensure the numbers work.

5. Ticket Collapse Sparks Safeguard Calls. Event promoters are calling for protections around ticket revenues after Tickets.ie ceased trading and provisional liquidators were appointed on 8 June. The collapse has already been covered; the new issue is whether ticket money needs stronger ringfencing before the next busy festival season.

US-Iran deal hopes sent oil lower and stocks higher, as markets priced in the possibility that the Strait of Hormuz threat may finally ease. That relief reached airline, energy and inflation-sensitive shares, including Ryanair and Aer Lingus, though cheaper crude still has to work its way through fuel, fares and household bills. In Britain, the Bank of England is expected to hold rates at 3.75% this week, while Rightmove reported the biggest June asking-price fall for property in 14 years. China added the demand warning, with May retail sales falling 0.6%, the first monthly fall since December 2022. The UK gets that too, but its Bank Rate is still above the ECB’s deposit rate, so housing pressure is not going away.

Legal & Regulatory

Ireland’s legal and regulatory week is less about headline rules and more about whether the systems behind them can actually carry the load.

Criminal legal aid is the sharpest example. Wexford solicitors have withdrawn a range of services, including Garda station interviews, evening courts and weekend courts, in protest at proposed fee reforms. The Department wants a flatter system that improves efficiency, but the profession says the new structure threatens the viability of criminal defence work. That moves the issue beyond a pay dispute. If the work becomes uneconomic, access to representation becomes a court-system problem.

Platform regulation is also moving from policy paper to dispute machinery. Coimisiún na Meán has certified Impress Dispute Resolutions, a subsidiary of the British press regulator Impress, as an out-of-court dispute body under the Digital Services Act. Its decisions are non-binding, but the move still matters because Ireland is where much of Europe’s platform regulation lands in practice. The process is becoming part of the product. Meanwhile, corporate advisory work sat beside the disputes with William Fry reporting it acted alongside Cooley on Salesforce’s agreement to acquire Fin, formerly Intercom. It is a nice legal-services footnote to today’s biggest business story: the largest Irish-founded software exit still needs Irish lawyers at the table.

The courts brought the commercial end of the same theme. Longchamp is suing Dunnes over allegedly similar handbags, while Dunnes denies the claims and is seeking to cancel the relevant EU trademarks. Separately, XTX Finland has brought High Court proceedings against Dell’s Irish-registered entity over an alleged $62m to $70m server price increase for a 15,000sq.m. data centre. Contracts, IP and procurement terms are now frontline operating risk.

Internationally, the ECB has expanded scrutiny of banks’ links to private credit, another sign that regulators are chasing activity that moved faster than ordinary oversight.

The watch point is whether these processes actually reduce friction or just move it somewhere more expensive.

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

Tuesday – On the Move…

Cathal Barry, Board Director, Drury: elevated internally from financial communications; transaction and reputation advice moves closer to the top table.

Frank Tobin, Ornua Board: joins as Tirlán’s nominee after senior Tirlán and Glanbia roles; dairy governance keeps deep sector memory close.

Charleen O’Keeffe, Partner, Matheson: joins from William Fry to lead IP disputes; useful timing in a week of handbags, software and trade marks.

Mr Justice Brian O’Moore, President, ENCJ: elected from the Supreme Court to lead Europe’s judicial-councils network; an Irish judge steps onto the courts-governance stage.

RTÉ has somehow become an international hero for World Cup fans, with overseas viewers praising its free, spoiler-light highlights. Great stuff, until you remember some GAA fans spent the weekend trying to find The Saturday Game on RTÉ Player like it was buried treasure. Elsewhere, The Phoenix is shutting its doors after 43 years of satire, gossip and knowing exactly the truths nobody else knew. Ireland will survive without many things, but good mischief in print is a harder loss.

The Read – RTÉ Brainstorm – How The Iran Ceasefire Could Affect Aviation And Fuel Prices

The oil story earlier is the market version; this is the practical explainer. It sets out why cheaper crude does not instantly become cheaper flights, freight or petrol, with jet fuel, hedging, refinery capacity and supply routes all sitting between the headline price and the final bill. That matters after US-Iran deal hopes pushed oil lower and airline shares higher. Anyone trying to understand why markets move faster than price decreases should give it a read. The Link: How The Iran Ceasefire Could Affect Aviation And Fuel Prices

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