Ireland’s two biggest homebuilders, Cairn Homes and Glenveagh Properties, have been public-offering success stories, but the fact remains that more Irish businesses aren’t going down this funding route.
Cairn Homes and Glenveagh Properties went public in 2015 and 2017, respectively, and have since delivered about 5,000 homes a year between them, addressing Ireland’s severe housing shortage.
According to Brian Garrahy, a director at Davy Corporate Finance, “Cairn didn’t exist in 2014, while Glenveagh was very small. They built themselves on public markets. Now, they’re the two biggest housebuilders in the country.”
The two companies are valued at over €1 billion each, with their share prices having roughly doubled over the last three years or so.
In 2017, Paris-based Euronext announced plans to buy the Irish Stock Exchange, which had 51 listed companies at the time. However, instead of growth, the market has declined, with the Irish market now having just over 20 equity listings.
High-profile departures include building firm CRH, gambling giant Flutter, and packaging business Smurfit Kappa, all of which shifted their primary listings to the US.
The last true IPO of an Irish business on the local market was HealthBeacon, a Dublin-based medical technology firm, which raised €25 million in December 2021.
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Daryl Byrne, the CEO of Euronext Dublin, points to multiple issues, including the market contraction and the lack of a strong culture of companies accessing public markets to fund their growth.
Globally, there were about 1,300 IPOs in 2025, according to EY, down from a high of more than 2,000 in 2021.
Many businesses interested in going public are increasingly pulled to the deeper pockets of the US market, while those who want to stay private often find cash available from venture capital or private equity funds.
A perfect example is Fin, formerly Intercom, which was acquired by Salesforce for $3.6 billion in June, having raised almost $500 million across venture capital and debt without ever going down the IPO route.
Irish businesses and the broader economy can benefit from public funding, as companies like Cairn and Glenveagh have demonstrated the potential benefits.
Euronext has launched IPOready, a six-month educational programme for executives to learn about financing options, with a focus on IPOs.
Byrne says that IPOs tend to go on the radar for companies when they are halfway down the financing path, and it could be three to four years before they even do an IPO.
Euronext has also pushed politicians for measures to encourage more listings, including the removal of the 1% stamp duty from the trading of shares in Irish-listed companies valued at less than €1 billion.
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The government has partially granted this request, and Euronext has seen a boost for its Euronext Access market, a “springboard” market for small enterprises that launched last year.
Fergal McAleavey, Corporate Finance Partner at EY Ireland, is downbeat about the prospects for Irish IPOs, citing the trend of the last 10 years and the lack of capital in Ireland.
However, he also notes that the US could help stimulate European equity markets, with anticipated mega-cap AI listings potentially boosting confidence among companies considering listing.
As the Irish market looks to the future, it’s clear that a combination of factors will be needed to stimulate growth and encourage more businesses to consider the public funding route.
They will need to address the decline of the Irish Stock Exchange and find ways to attract more companies to list on the public markets.
It is a complex issue, and there is no easy solution.
The future of Irish IPOs remains uncertain.
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