‘Accountants are well placed to be agents of change’
FRANK O’KEEFFE
ACTIVITY EY is incredibly proud to have delivered a third year of market-leading growth in our most recent financial year to 30 June 2023, a performance which further underscores our position as the largest, most ambitious and fastest growing professional services firm on the island of Ireland.
This fantastic result for EY Ireland across all our service lines - Assurance, Consulting, Tax and Law, and Strategy and Transactions - has been driven by strategic investments in our teams and in our technology, all underpinned by a relentless focus on quality and delivering excellence for our clients, who turn to us to help them solve their most complex challenges.
In September 2023, we announced an additional 1,000 new roles in our Northern Ireland practice, to be filled over the next five years. Across the island, we now employ over 5,000 people, and we continue to hire for key skills, including in AI, data analytics, tax, law, audit, strategy, modelling, change management and cloud computing.
STRATEGY In our most recent financial year we launched or expanded new businesses including EY Law, EY Parthenon and EY Carbon, and we acquired leading domestic enterprise technology firm Client Solutions. Most recently we launched EY.ai, which brings together human capabilities and artificial intelligence, and EYQ, EY’s own Large Language Model, which is transforming how we work.
We also recognise the important role we play in supporting the development of Ireland’s future business leaders. In the past 12 months we have promoted or progressed 1,634 people across all areas of our business. We believe that diversity brings strength, and I’m incredibly proud that we have 89 different nationalities in EY Ireland working alongside our clients every day.
PROFESSION With their domain knowledge and controls-based mindset, accountants are well placed to be agents of change, embracing technology and understanding how it can lead to more efficiencies in the operations of an organisation of any size.
While traditional functions such as bookkeeping, financial planning, risk management and reporting continue to remain central to the role of an accountant, advances in technology mean they can avail of developments in data analytics and related AI and other technologies to help accelerate predictive insights. Moreover, by harnessing technology to automate more repetitive tasks, AI can free up accountants’ time to work on more value-add strategic work.
It’s important to remember that the advanced data analytics and AI that we are all really excited about today represents the next step in the process of harnessing technology which accountants have been pioneering for centuries – from double entry bookkeeping to calculators to spreadsheets and more.
OUTLOOK After stellar economic growth in Ireland in 2021 and 2022 and some normalisation in 2023, EY is forecasting reasonably solid growth in 2024, with GDP to rise by 2.2% and employment to increase by 1.6% this year. Ireland’s economy remains robust. I speak with business leaders across the island every day, and would rate their sentiment as ‘cautiously optimistic’.
Business does not stand still. To keep pace with global markets and to stay ahead we need to continue to cultivate the seeds of future economic growth by training and upskilling our workforce, investing in necessary infrastructure, accelerating the green transition and harnessing the transformative potential of new technologies such as AI.