Move over, London – Dublin is poised to overtake the city as the IT real-estate capital of Europe, according to international property agents Colliers International.
The Irish Independent reported Colliers International as having revealed in a report, Media and Technology iQ, that the pace of corporate property deals in Dublin – the result of the city’s increasing tech market – is close to surpassing the IT real-estate market in London.
The Colliers International report examined commercial property development across Europe and found the IT sector accounted for 30pc of office take-up last year.
The report also found major tech companies based in the US invested more than US$130bn (about €95bn) in Ireland between 2008 and 2012, almost as much as they invested in all of developing Asia.
Major US-based tech firms that have Irish operations include AOL, Amazon, Twitter, Dropbox, Microsoft and TripAdvisor.
What’s more, the report found Ireland is the fastest-growing country in Europe for data-centre operators.
The Irish Independent reported Paul Finucane, director at Colliers International, as having said tech firms are attracted to Dublin because the city offers them “young and fresh talent in abundance, and the city has also proved its ability to attract talent from abroad, with 55pc of the positions in the information and communications sectors coming from abroad to work in Dublin”.
Finucane added there is now an expectation that new office buildings will start being built in Dublin this year.
“There’s a massive scarcity of prime office space now for big companies that want to set up in Dublin,” he said.
Bruno Berretta, senior research analyst and author of Media and Technology iQ, said, “The media and technology sector is now the most important and active business sector and one of the key economic drivers in a number of European markets.”
O’Connell Street in Dublin image via Shutterstock
