Ireland for Finance

On 26 April 2019 the Government launched Ireland for Finance a strategy for the further development of the international financial services (IFS) sector in Ireland to 2025.

The vision of the Strategy is for Ireland to be a top-tier global location of choice for specialist international financial services.

Ireland for Finance builds upon the success of "IFS2020", the previous IFS five-year strategy for the development of the international financial services sector launched in 2015.

The employment target for the new Strategy is to reach 50,000 people in direct employment in the sector by 2025. This compares with 44,000 people directly employed in the sector at the end of 2018.

The Strategy is structured around the following four pillars:

1. The operating environment pillar is focused on ensuring the policy, culture and legislative conditions underpinning IFS will support growth;

2. The technology and innovation pillar is focused on providing a collaborative approach to addressing emerging challenges and opportunities in technological developments;

3. The talent pillar seeks to ensure that we continue to have skilled people to meet the demands of the IFS sector, including meeting new and changing skills ; and

4. The communications and promotion pillar is focused on ensuring that Ireland’s IFS offering is communicated to all those who are or may be attracted to investing in Ireland.

Three horizontal priorities will apply across the four pillars - regionalisation, sustainable finance and diversity.

The Strategy retains the “whole-of-Government” approach that underpinned the success of previous Government strategies for the international financial services sector. This will be supported through ongoing collaboration between public and private stakeholders and educational institutions to ensure the talent and expertise of all three sectors can continue to be successfully harnessed to build on existing achievements and secure the ambitions set out in the new Strategy.

The Strategy will be updated each year by means of annual Action Plans. This approach ensures that the Strategy remains relevant and up-to-date in identifying and addressing emerging challenges. Each annual Action Plan will contain a list of measures grouped under each of the four pillars to be actioned in that year with a responsible stakeholder tasked with leading on the execution of each measure.

The implementation of the Strategy is overseen by a public sector High Level Implementation Committee (HLIC) with assistance from an Industry Advisory Committee (IAC). This Joint Committee meets quarterly and it is chaired by Minister of State D’Arcy. The HLIC membership consists of the Secretary Generals of the Departments of the Taoiseach; Education and Skills; Foreign Affairs and Trade; Business, Enterprise and Innovation and Finance and the Chief Executive Officers of the IDA and Enterprise Ireland. The IAC includes key industry stakeholders such as representative bodies (secretariat), advisory firms and senior executives from companies across the different international financial services sectors.

One of the key actions under the Communication Pillar is the hosting of the European Financial Forum 2020 in Dublin Castle on 12 February. The Forum will bring together international and Irish industry executives, policy makers, regulators and thought leaders to provide cutting edge analysis on the main business and regulatory issues that the financial services industry should consider in 2020 and the years ahead.

See https://live.ft.com/Events/2020/European-Financial-Forum-2020 for further information.