Myles Clarke spends more time than most talking to funds, companies and individuals looking to invest in Ireland. 

As the head of CBRE Ireland, the former RBS banker leads Ireland’s largest commercial real estate advisory firm. When a foreign multinational is thinking about expanding in Ireland, the chances are that they will pick up the phone with Clarke, or one of his colleagues, to check out office options. 

Likewise, when a fund is looking at acquiring commercial property, a key part of Clarke’s role is helping them structure the deal. 

And the more he talks to investors, the more the same messages keep coming back. 

They like the fundamentals of Ireland, particularly, as Clarke puts it, the country’s “emerging market-style growth dynamics wrapped in the governance of the EU”.

According to Clarke, this just doesn’t exist anywhere else. “It is a unique growth proposition, and the investors are very clear on that, they get it,” he told me last week.

But there is another message coming back from investors too, and it is not so positive. 

When they fly into Ireland, the first thing they see from the sky is green space. Lots of green space. And yet, they are also acutely aware that Ireland is in the midst of a seemingly never-ending housing crisis, a crisis that impacts the ability of workers to live affordably, and as such, impacts the willingness of companies to pump their money into Ireland. 

Clarke believes money is not the problem. Funds, he says, are eager to ease the strain and build housing stock in Ireland. But that eagerness is not reciprocated.

“The investors I spoke about are absolutely vocal, they go, ‘We love Ireland, we think it’s a great dynamic, we want to invest there, but you’re making it impossible for us to underwrite your housing plans’,” Clarke told me in our detailed interview.

The way Clarke sees it, Ireland needs to lose the stigmatisation around institutional funds, and scrap the rental cap. “All you’re doing is starving the market of the capital that wants to come and give you all that money at very attractive rates to build the scale that you want and need,” he says.

Ireland, he believes, cutting off its nose to spite its face. “The building blocks here are incredibly strong, I think we just need to get better at execution,” he says. 

It is an interesting choice of words and one that chimes with a growing debate about Ireland’s ability to close its yawning infrastructural gap. Writing in The Irish Times recently, Martin Shanahan, the former IDA chief executive who is now a partner with Grant Thornton, warned that multinationals are increasingly frustrated with the slow response in addressing infrastructure shortfalls in areas like housing, energy, water and transport.

“These issues will continue to make it difficult to attract investment, if not addressed more quickly. Competitively priced utilities and infrastructure are entry-level requirements for investors,” Shanahan stated. 

The National Competitiveness and Productivity Council harbours similar fears, stating in its recent annual report that long-standing concerns around infrastructure, particularly housing, energy and water, may now be impacting the pipeline of both domestic and international investment.

The council added that it had raised similar concerns, repeatedly, in previous annual reports. “It is imperative that we take the decisions around prioritisation and sequencing which are necessary to meet these challenges,” the council said.

The council makes 11 specific recommendations to expedite the planning and delivery of sustainable infrastructure, including a review of the management of Ireland’s energy supply, the prioritisation of renewable projects, and the introduction of a new specialist conveyancing profession.

The new competition, the new war for investment, will centre on talent and infrastructure. 

In his recent address at the Patrick MacGill Summer School in Glenties, Simon Harris made a bold proposal for a new Department of Infrastructure, echoing a similar call by Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary. 

The idea is to have an integrated approach to the delivery of infrastructure, rather than the current siloed approach where different responsibilities lie with different departments, state agencies, and government bodies, as well as local authorities. 

“I hear from businesses how water projects impact road and rail projects, which impact housing delivery, and so on. Let’s get them fixed together,” the Taoiseach stated, adding elsewhere in his address: “Consider the problems of 2025. They are problems of climate change, energy, water, housing, healthcare, education, transport, and more. All of them can be solved by a dedicated Department whose role it is to prosecute the delivery of these projects, large and small, for our state.”

The current lack of State capacity in this area was evident in the market consultation that opened a few days ago, seeking expressions of interest from consultants ahead of a formal procurement process for Dublin’s proposed MetroLink rail project. “The project delivery partner appointment shall manage the various MetroLink contracts, procured by Transport Infrastructure Ireland (TII), through providing, but not limited to, safety, project management, site supervision and contract administration professional services to suit each contract form,” the call for submissions reads.

TII will effectively appoint a contractor to manage the Metrolink contractors because the state agency doesn’t have the capacity to do it itself.

This approach is common in English-speaking countries. The CEO of Egis, a French firm eyeing up Metrolink contracts as part of its Irish expansion, told Thomas in a recent interview that it had secured such project-management contracts in the US because the authorities there faced the same lack of capacity in contracting the development of infrastructure.

Other countries in Europe and Asia have built this capacity within state bodies, delivering large projects at a demonstrably lower cost. A well-resourced Department of Infrastructure could help Ireland move into this category.

If implemented, the proposal would require the government to axe a different government department (it could also just fold the Department of Public Expenditure back into the Department of Finance). They might cause tensions politically, particularly with the public sector, but there is merit to the proposal. 

I try to avoid using the word crisis because it takes away from the meaning of the word. But housing truly is a crisis (to get a sense of the rental crisis, a subsection of the wider housing crisis, just look at Ronan’s piece from last week when he revealed that market rents nationwide were an average of 7.3 per cent higher in the second quarter of 2024 than a year previously.)

And that crisis needs a coordinated, holistic approach. 

It is impossible to look at building housing in isolation. We also need to look at roads, energy, public transport infrastructure, and much more besides. 

The remit of housing needs to fall under this new department; so too do the various local authorities if it is to work properly. The issue is not a lack of policies, ideas or strategies, but implementation and delivery.

Sadly, there is a lack of delivery and coherence across those areas. The unnecessary kerfuffle on the residential-zoned land tax is a case in point, although in this case, it was an unseemly tussle between government parties as opposed to government departments.  

The world is changing, and those changes have implications for Ireland.

The IDA recently called out an intensely competitive global environment, stating that there had been a significant shift in industrial policy in Europe, the US and Asia over the last 18 months.

In its recent pre-budget submission, the employers’ group Ibec correctly identified that “state-driven competition, geopolitical tensions, and reduced trade openness” were challenging small countries like Ireland.

In this new world, we can no longer compete on subsidies. The new competition, the new way for investment, will centre on talent and infrastructure. 

As Clarke put it, investors like Ireland. They want to do business here. But that appetite for investment will erode if Ireland fails to overcome its infrastructure deficits. 

“Selling Ireland is easy,” Clark told me. “Executing the sale can be tough.”

Elsewhere last week…

Irish digital transformation business Version 1 has doubled in size over the past two years. Its chief technology officer Brad Mallard told Michael how the company plans to use generative AI to repeat the trick and how its aggressive international expansion could put it on course to become a €1 billion business.

First came the Olympics. Now it is the turn of the Paralympics. Last week, I caught up with the chief executive of Paralympics Ireland, Stephen McNamara, who is determined to increase both state and commercial funding. However, the former Ryanair and IRFU executive also wants to use sport to advocate for inclusion.

Tech billionaires spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on reversing their biological ages to live younger for longer. They are investing billions in longevity start-ups and influencers are getting in on the game. Andrea looked at the issue in her column.

Irish-headquartered cybersecurity firm Integrity360 has bought its fourth business since being backed by private equity firm August Equity. Its executive chair Ian Brown told Tom what is next.