Managing partners in leading Accountancy & Business Advisory practices discuss activity, in-demand service lines, and the business outlook

ACTIVITY

EY Ireland is proud to have delivered record results for the financial year to the end of June 2024 with revenues up 9.5% to €772m.

This represents a fourth year of strong growth and further underscores our position as the largest and fastest-growing professional services firm on the island of Ireland.

The strong performance has continued in the current financial year across our four service lines — Tax & Law, Assurance, Consulting and Strategy and Transactions — and is testament to our world-class teams and brilliant clients.

We have held our market leadership position by staying agile and maintaining an unwavering dedication to creating long-term value for our clients, our people and the communities we serve.

Thanks to consistently strong client demand, we are continuing our ambitious growth plans and recruiting the brightest and most diverse talent across our business.

EY Ireland employment has grown by 50% over the past three years and right now we have more than 5,200 people, including more than 100 different nationalities, in our business.

DEVELOPMENTS

We continue to make long-term investments in talent and technology to position us well for the future, enabling us to further support our clients to shape their future with confidence.

Our current investment areas include artificial intelligence (AI), cybersecurity, managed services, sustainability and law.

Globally, our firm launched our new ‘All in’ strategy last year, which sets out a bold ambition to create enhanced value for EY clients, people and stakeholders.

‘All in’ is not just a business strategy, it captures an attitude and way of working —combining the multi-disciplinary skills of the 400,000-person strong EY global team to anticipate and navigate a changing world.

EY Ireland is scheduled to move its Dublin headquarters to the Wilton Park campus along the Grand Canal in Dublin 2 in the second half of 2026.

This will significantly increase our existing footprint in the city centre as we move to state-of-the-art facilities designed to enhance collaboration, innovation and client service.

Later this year, we will be opening a new office at Ebrington Plaza in Derry.

Our seventh office location on the island of Ireland, it will give us access to the world-class talent available across the northwest region.

We believe the next decade will see a fundamental transformation of organisations, business models and value creation, all underpinned by AI in combination with continued advances in digital, cloud and metaverse solutions.

There is no question that AI is close to the top of the business agenda for all organisations, from how to use it to better connect with customers, boost productivity or supercharge workforces to identifying new business possibilities.

EY’s recent CEO Outlook report found that 65% of CEOs globally recognise the potential for AI to drive productivity and positive outcomes for stakeholders, with 45% actively planning capital investments in AI in the next 12 months.

In EY Ireland, in addition to the 1,000 people we have working with clients in Technology Consulting, we employ more than 350 people in our AI and Data Analytics practice, which brings together experts across AI, data analytics, technology and business to help clients harness the full potential of AI.

EY is also transforming itself with AI. We turned the lens inwards and treated ourselves as the initial AI client — ‘Client Zero’ — to pinpoint where the greatest value and returns could be realised.

Globally, EY has invested $1.4bn in technology and talent. We have rolled out extensive AI training across our firm and have our own private large language model that is being used daily by over 400,000 EY people globally.

CLIENT CHALLENGES

 I meet business leaders and CEOs every day and many believe that a long-term focus on transformation is the best way to mitigate disruptive forces.

In a tight labour market clients continue to focus on managing costs via greater process efficiency and stronger productivity, including from new technologies such as generative AI.

Sustainability remains an important issue, and while there may be debate over the speed of progress, it is inarguable that it remains firmly on the CEO agenda.

Clients are focused on increasing regulatory demands and the need to build new teams to meet reporting requirements.

In many cases the focus has shifted from strategy to compliance, with data collection and integrity providing the foundational knowledge for further transformation.