Dublin’s booming technology sector has picked up so much momentum that it could well overtake London as Europe’s high-tech hub, according to one international property agent.
A report from Colliers International, which looked at commercial property development across Europe, claims that internet, software and IT communications companies snapped up 30 per cent of the Irish capital’s office availability in 2013. American tech corporations alone invested more than $130bn in Ireland between 2008 and 2012 — exactly the same figure investors pumped into “all of developing Asia”.
The survey also identified Ireland as the fastest growing country in Europe for data centre operators. “The tech sector is solely responsible for getting Dublin through the bad times,” said Paul Finucane, a director at Colliers International. “And with the recession over, Dublin is hot on the heels of London for the title of Europe’s Silicon Valley.”
The property grab by high-tech operators is also forcing up prime city centre office rents by as much as 25 per cent a year. “Any company now looking for more than 5,000sq metres of Grade A space in the areas that tech companies want — Dublin 2 and 4 — is finding very little available,” he added.
Dublin is also overhauling London when it comes to the growth in available office space suitable for high-tech and web service companies. “Tech companies are starting to reach out to other areas because they have to,” said Finucane. “Everything else they need is here, Dublin offers them young and fresh talent in abundance, and the city has also proved its ability to attract talent from abroad, with 55 per cent of the positions in the information and communications sectors are being filled by people coming from abroad to work in Dublin.”
Like other pundits, Colliers predicts a wave of new construction to hit Dublin this year, driven largely by a need to fill the office vacuum. “The consensus is that we’ll see a return to speculative development. We’re now seeing increased rents of €40 per square foot, so it makes sense to build. We’ve very little large office space left in the city centre.
“There’s a misconception that there has been a lot of empty buildings sitting there for years,” Finucane said “What is there has been coming to the market. It’s just that there’s not a lot of stock left.”
IDA Ireland — the government body charged with attracting inward investment — has set up a specific division to focus on attracting high-potential, high-growth companies to Ireland at an early stage of their development. “Ireland’s reputation as a location for fast-growing businesses to expand into international markets continues to grow,” commented IDA chief executive, Barry O’Leary. “We hope to have the next Amazon, Google and Oracle in this group of companies.”
And only last week five North America firms confirmed they were creating 130 new Dublin jobs spread across a range of IT sectors. The companies setting up offices in Ireland are software analytics company New Relic, internet domain name registry business Starting Dot, global consulting company capSpire, manufacturer NeoMed, and logistics company SEKO MedTec.
