Ireland - 'The Phoenix Miracle’

I recently wrote an article about the ‘Celtic Phoenix’ and the general positivity of the Irish economy for 2017, especially within financial services.

On Thursday the 6th of April, the Central Bank published its latest quarterly bulletin with Chief Economist Gabriel Fagan calling Ireland a “high-wage, high-skills economy”. Although Ireland still faces the risk of Brexit, Fagan’s outlook echoed the confidence of the Deloitte survey of UK CFOs.

The bulletin echoed the experiences of Marks Sattin Ireland in 2017. We have registered almost 100 new jobs in the first quarter of 2017 and have seen the average salary increase by around €5k from the corresponding quarter in 2016.

Across the market, the financial services sector has been extremely active especially the fund administrators who were fairly quiet in Q1 2016. This is a result of increased client activity as well as consolidation across the market. 

The insurance industry has also been very busy and we have seen a huge increase in the number of roles coming live within commerce & industry. Generally both clients and candidates are much more bullish about opportunities in 2017.

Our recent Market Report for 2017 (which will be published soon) told us that 83% of people surveyed felt secure or very secure in their current role and 75% expected a pay rise this year. Equally 60% of our clients and candidates received a bonus in 2016 and almost 80% of people were as confident or more confident about the economic prospects for 2017.

The Central Bank is predicting the jobless rate will fall to 5.6% by the end of 2018 and we continue to see increased volumes of roles – the majority of these are newly created positions due to business growth or greater activity. Many of our international clients are continuing to create new positions in their Dublin offices and our local clients building out their finance teams.

Since early 2012 there have been over 200,000 jobs created which in a country with a population of around 4 million, which is extremely encouraging.

As the National Recruitment Federation winner of Best Accountancy and Finance Recruiter, Marks Sattin Ireland is ideally placed to help you with your next move and would love to hear from candidates in the UK, looking to move to/return to Ireland or candidates based here in Ireland.