Only 8% of Docklands renters are Irish, says estate agent for tech giants

Just 8 per cent of renters in Dublin’s Docklands are Irish, says estate agent Owen Reilly who is a property specialist in the Dublin 2 area.

Reilly’s comments come in the wake of the IDA revealing that employment by foreign direct investment companies in Ireland has reached its highest level in history, with 210,443 people employed in Ireland by such companies, surpassing a five-year target of 209,000, set by the IDA in 2015.

“Only 8 per cent of our tenants in the Docklands are now Irish,” says Reilly, who sources homes for workers in giant tech companies like Facebook, Google and Airbnb and big law and accountancy firms in the area.

“To put that in context, in 2015, 35 per cent of our tenants were Irish. In 2016, that number dropped to 15 per cent.”

That 27 per cent drop over a two-year period is not just attributable to the increase of FDI companies in Ireland, according to Reilly. He feels that a desire by Irish people to avoid the top-end rental prices the Docklands commands is seeing them look further afield.

“The figures do reflect the nature of foreign companies in the Docklands, but we feel more of an issue is the high rents and the Irish attitude to high rents compared to international people,” says Reilly.

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