President's message

Amplifying Ireland’s Ambition

"Taoiseach, Ministers, Distinguished Guests, Ibec Board colleagues and members, ladies and gentlemen – you are all very welcome to the RDS here this evening. My sincere thanks to Danny and his team for bringing this event together – always a highlight in the Ibec and Irish corporate calendar.

It’s a great honour to welcome you all to this year’s Ibec President’s Dinner. To stand here this evening, in the company of over 800 leaders from across every corner of Irish enterprise as your President, is both humbling and energising.

I want to pay tribute to our outgoing President, the one-off that is Anne O’Leary. The energy and leadership you have shown over the last 12 months Anne have been unwavering. We are in your debt for all you have brought to the role, and I am honoured to follow in your footsteps. On behalf of all Ibec members, thank you.

I want to thank my Ibec Board colleagues who have nominated me for this position and for the support from the wider membership. As a very proud Waterford man, I am deeply gratified by the confidence you have placed in another member of the Munster team to take up the Ibec Presidency baton. Perhaps this can be seen as extending a summer of success for the province, most notably in Croke Park on All-Ireland Hurling and Football Final days.

I want to congratulate Maureen Walsh on her appointment as Deputy President of Ibec and I very much look forward to working with her over the year ahead.

Ibec is a unique platform for Irish business, providing an unrivalled network of business advocates, unifying business leaders from across Ireland onto the one team, regardless of industry, with the one common goal of supporting economic and social progress.

We are the people who build—who create jobs, drive innovation, and help to shape the future of this country. And tonight, as we reflect on where we are, I want to speak about where we must go. Because while we have much to be proud of, we also have much to address.

Ireland is growing - economically, demographically, technologically and globally. But the required infrastructure to support our growth, our potential, our aspirations is not keeping pace.

We are at a pivotal moment in our history. Notwithstanding the current global economic uncertainty, in Ireland we stand on the threshold of great opportunity, yet we are encumbered by significant challenges that we must deal with head-on.

Tonight, I want us to think about the legacy we will leave for future generations.

Will it be one of ambition met with action, or will we falter under the burden of our own indecision and negativity?

From housing to transport, energy to water, we are facing an infrastructure deficit that is smothering our potential. Businesses are struggling to attract talent because of housing shortages. Commuters are losing hours in traffic. And our energy grid is under pressure, just as we try to lead on the transition to a lower carbon future.

Our nation has always been one of vision, resilience, and collective spirit and there is so much of which we can be proud. But as we gather here tonight, we are at a crossroads. The decisions we make today will reverberate for decades to come, shaping the Ireland that our children and grandchildren will inherit.

We must embrace this moment with courage and with clarity. It is time to deliver bold solutions and to summon the same spirit of innovation, character and sheer dogged determination that has carried us through past adversity.

This issue is not new; however, it has quite rightly been recently acknowledged as a matter of urgency, as reflected in the very welcome update to the National Development Plan which the Government announced in July.

Nearly a century ago, in the 1920s, Ireland faced a very different set of challenges. We were a young state, emerging from war and conflict, with limited resources and uncertain prospects.

And yet, in that moment, we built Ardnacrusha - a hydroelectric power station on the Shannon that, at the time, was one of the most ambitious engineering projects in the world. In fact, on its completion, it was the largest hydroelectric scheme globally.

Taoiseach, you like me, will be pleased to note that it drew its inspiration from a plan initially developed by the first President of our alma mater, Sir Robert Kane.

It was bold to the point of brazenness, it was controversial, it was the subject of much criticism in its planning and construction. Sounds familiar, but as it has been cited in recent months as a reference point, it was transformative in meeting the electricity needs of the entire country.

Ardnacrusha wasn’t just about electricity. It was about belief. Belief in a modern Ireland. Belief that we could shape our own destiny. The project enabled a vision for Ireland and possibilities for our future that were previously unimaginable.

We didn’t build it because we could afford it – it cost 20% of the national budget. We built it because the leaders of that generation recognised that we couldn’t afford not to.

In recent decades, a range of major infrastructure projects have been delivered to support Ireland’s growing society and economy, such as the Luas, Terminal 2 at Dublin Airport, the Motorway Network, the Port Tunnel, and the Jack Lynch Tunnel in Cork.

While the planning and allocation of investment for these initiatives were at times met with strong resistance, much noise and some nonsense, their positive impact on the nation’s economic and social development is widely recognized and appreciated.

Roll forward to today, where we face a different kind of challenge—but the same kind of opportunity - that will ensure our future competitiveness and prosperity.

We need a new era of collective leadership – with an unrelenting and unapologetic focus on delivery against the National Development Plan – an investment of €275bn - that brings us closer to:

• A housing system that gives people a place they can call home.
• A public transport network that connects all our cities and regions.
• A digital infrastructure that keeps us globally competitive.
• A green energy grid that powers a sustainable future.

At AIB, we have placed the sustainability agenda central to our Group strategy for close to the last decade. Through our actions, we have proven that it is good for business, and good for the economy & society we serve.

Securing Ireland’s energy supply and effectively leveraging our natural resources are essential components for ensuring a sustainable future. The shores off the coasts of Ireland provide an opportunity for us through wind energy to have such clean energy independence and provide sustainable revenue that could be the envy of the world.

Yet over the last decade – notwithstanding great progress on building onshore wind farms and indeed solar energy – through innovation and determination from all sides - there are long periods of time when they remain switched off as there is no capacity to either store or sell the energy they produce, leaving an asset that is not maximising its potential return.

That’s not good for business or for society.

Looking across the Irish sea, Britain is a world leader in offshore and onshore wind – building the farms, connecting to the infrastructure, maximising the asset, benefitting business, the economy and society with lower ‘dispatch down’ rates where energy production is curtailed as a result of lack of infrastructure.

This is a valuable chance for shared learning between our islands, and just one of a number of examples of opportunity waiting to be exploited. I’m sure if we went around the room this evening there would be many others of equal merit.

Let's use this moment in time to focus on what we can influence - controlling our controllables - to make real and lasting progress and not let this chance pass us by.

This is not just a government responsibility. It’s a national project. And business, all of us in this room, must be at the heart of it.

We have the capital. We have the innovation.

What we need is a collective mindset - brave leadership, laser focused, which prioritises delivery—faster planning, long-term thinking, and ultimately the collective courage to act beyond the next quarterly profit report or the next election cycle.

As your President, I want to assure you that Ibec will be at the forefront of this challenge.

As a room of business leaders, I’m calling for a collective voice, collective leadership, collective ambition. No noise, no nonsense.

Our commitment to you Taoiseach, is that we, as Ireland’s leading business network, will work with your government, across industry, within communities and our members to develop the essential ideas, policies and partnerships required to facilitate meaningful progress against the recently published and rightly-ambitious National Development Plan.

Let’s not settle for easy solutions. Let’s aim for generational impact.

Let’s be the generation that built the foundations for the next 100 years.

Ardnacrusha lit up a nation. Not just with power, but with purpose.

Let’s channel that same spirit—not to look back with nostalgia, but to look forward with resolve and determination.

Ireland’s future won’t be built by chance. It will be built by choice—our choice.

Let’s choose ambition.

Thank you."