Author Archives: TBR Team

Here for a good time, not a long time: Dublin’s dining scene runs on hype

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Jessica Weld

Over the last few years, the food and drink scene in Dublin has become a quick-moving conveyor belt of sparkly new concept destinations, each trying to win foodies over to be crowned the best in its particular niche in the capital.

One glaringly obvious reoccurrence has been the short-lived nature of most of these ventures. In Dublin these days, it’s feast or famine – miss a beat and due to the extortionately high overheads of rent, labour and utilities and not to mention the ever lingering cost-of-living crisis hampering footfall, your new venture won’t be long going under. 

The Restaurants Association of Ireland reported that in the first three months of 2025, a whopping 150 restaurants closed across the country, citing rising operating costs as the reason for closure. In this report, RAI CEO Adrian Cummins called on the government to reduce the VAT rate on food and beverage sales to 9% in order to prevent further closures.

While many new entrants to the Dublin food scene typically fail after one year, there are some popular spots that stand the test of time and are regularly booked up and thriving. Social media has become an invaluable marketing tool for hospitality startups seeking to make their mark on the Dublin food scene. The reality of the current state of the Dublin hospitality trade is that the entire scene is being determined by online influence and for lack of a better word – “hype”. 

There are a growing number of Dublin based “foodie” influencers that fuel this hype, adhering to a whole range of different tastes and targeting very diverse audiences. From dual-threat DJ and Chef Marcus O’Laoire to the edgy and alternative vibe of former TV presenter Cassie Stokes, representation of the Irish food and drink scene on social media is at an all time high. 

Additionally, the rise of “User Generated Content” attributes to the Dublin foodie hype train. Everyone wants to be credited with finding the next “hidden gem” and gaining their own individual fame from a popular video on TikTok or Instagram.

This influence doesn’t just hit Dublin, shockwaves quickly ripple abroad leaving people from all over Ireland in a state of puzzlement over makeup guru James Charles’ TikTok video review of a Spice Bag from Xi’an Street Food in the centre of the city. The video posted in October 2024 garnered a whopping 6.3 million views and brought the restaurant international acclaim, causing an influx of tourists that were travelling to Dublin specifically to try their newly “viral” Spice Bag.

It’s these “viral” moments that are keeping the lights on in Dublin’s current flavour-of-the-month food spots. Popular steak restaurant Boeuf and Frites cultivated its own social media frenzy ahead of its opening in February 2024. The rapidly expanding restaurant group exploited a gap in the market for a good quality steak in the centre of the city – without paying the steakhouse premium price. 

They struck a very hard-to-find balance in the Dublin hospitality game and a lot of their success can be credited to their strong social media presence, appearing regularly on TikTok and Instagram feeds of Dublin locals through both their own content and masses of User Generated Content. Due to their consistent presence and a well-received “good bang for your buck” offering, Boeuf has continued to thrive in the local market despite the poor economic conditions.

Despite Dublin’s hype economy keeping some of the city’s old and new favourite institutions afloat, this whole situation begs the question of how much more can Dublin’s food and beverage scene really take? 

With an exponential rise in restaurant closures and the industry’s outcry for a VAT decrease being ignored in the latest budget, will our favourite hotspots be able to survive on vibes and hype alone? Or are spoiled dishes and closed doors the price of dining in Dublin?

US/China AI Wars Escalate as China Effectively Bans Major US Developers.

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By Michael Fennell

Prior to the economic, cultural, and seemingly unending prominence of Artificial Intelligence, the US had unequivocal control in chip development. American companies like Intel and AMD dominated the space. But the industry has changed. A company once known for making graphics cards for gaming PCs is now a multi trillion dollar empire on the cutting edge of the most burdening industry in the world.
Nvidia chips have been viewed as an industry flagship with the ability for massive parallel processing, a crucial part of training AI and the execution of AI prompts. What once lay in the gaming PCs now lines server warehouses across the world. And the country of the company who makes them has a big say in who can buy them and when.


China’s Interest in the AI Industry
AI has undoubtedly become a gigantic industry, one which many speculate is not just here to stay, but to change the world. China wants to be the major player in this space for a number of reasons. Most notably the economic growth; if anything akin to the tech boom of the early 2000s, this has the potentiality to create trillions in GDP growth, tens of thousands of jobs, as well as international esteem. Not only is there a positive ambition, but a defensive one too. A reliance on the US in these tumultuous times with fluctuating relations could cause serious trouble for China. But if the roles were reversed, they would have serious bargaining power.


China Battling US Strategy
Despite the excitement around AI, China has a dilemma on their hands. Unfortunately for them the new major chip manufacturer in the space, Nvidia, is another American company. Almost all cutting edge AI technology is being developed and operated with Nvidia at their core. For China, this means that in order to compete in the present, they need to depend on the United States, who are controlling and regulating Nvidia and their exports.


In July the US Commerce secretary took to the media to explain that the US plan to both profit off of China and prevent any AI leapfrogging from them. He stated the only chip they’d be able to buy was the H20, an inferior chip which he repeatedly referred to as the “fourth best”. He said China would become “addicted to the American technology stack” and that this would stifle their domestic innovation, keeping them from the AI mantle both in terms of chips and software.


Whether it was the interview in which the US Commerce secretary made the US economic strategy abundantly clear, or the Chinese government seeing the writing on the wall, they immediately sought to ban all US chips as quickly as possible, preventing all Chinese companies from the future purchase of Nvidia chips. This was something that Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang referred to as “disappointing” in a BBC interview, a comment which was not surprising considering the potential profits Nvidia could have made from a US China arms race with Nvidia in the middle. Now China seeks to develop their own Nvidia, with companies such as Cambricon, one which is working closely with Chinese AI powerhouse Deepseek.

While undoubtedly sub the standard of Nvidia, the prospects of a new chip making powerhouse in the AI space excited investors, thus skyrocketing stock prices. Now seemingly cash rich, it would appear as though the Chinese chip industry is well armed in their race against the US. Even prior to the banning, the Chinese technology company Huawei seemed desperate to catch up to Nvidia in the AI race, massively ramping up funding by billions in the AI chip space.


Consequences for China and the US
In the immediate future, China’s inability to obtain top of the line chips will undoubtedly stifle their ability to adapt and evolve in this ever-emerging industry. Despite backing domestic manufacturers, Deepseek too may take a hit with less access to domestic chips for servers and AI training. Although with their seemingly relentless pursuit from the Chinese government who are providing deregulation to fuel innovation and massive capital investments, a catch up in some way is not out of the realm of possibility. The US opium wars style tactics of dependency against China have failed, but they themselves are also investing heavily in AI both with huge sums of private capital and through the federal government through shared data factories, US AI is being fostered for world domination.


Despite their failure to export to China, the rest of the world seem eager to embrace the top of the line tech, including the UAE who recently secured a billion dollar a year investment agreement with the US for the securing of Nvidia chips.

Can I Zip You? – Are Irish Banks Too Late to the Instant Transfer Revolution?

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By Sarah Renehan


The online platform Revolut, with an Irish customer base of three million people is finally
faced with a worthy rival in the Irish market, with the announcement of a new market entrant called
“Zippay”. Zippay, a feature being added to AIB, Bank of Ireland and Permanent TSB’s online
banking apps, will allow customers to send, request, and spilt payments with other users
without the use of third-party applications. Zippay may be seen as directly challenging the
long established success of Revolut, but will such a feature take off or have the traditional
Irish banks left it too late to reclaim the instant transfer market segment?


What Makes Revolut So Successful?
Launched over 10 years ago as a fintech startup, Revolut was co-founded by Nikolay
Stornosky and Vlad Yatsenko, and has a current valuation of $75bn as of September 2025.
The platform began with the promise of transparent currency exchange and is now used by
individuals across 160 countries and regions worldwide. It’s feature of instant payment transfers,
with no sending fees amongst Revolut users, has revolutionized the online banking space. Since
its original launch, it as expanded into other markets, including insurance and savings
accounts with competitive rates of AER. Revolut adapts quickly to market changes, in 2018
becoming the first European fintech app to offer cryptocurrency trading for the likes of Bitcoin
and Litecoin, and over 10 million users have traded £45 billion since 2017.


Can Traditional Banks Compete?
Since Revolut’s establishment as a fully-fledged digital banking platform, traditional banks
have lagged behind by failing to launch competing features, ultimately hindering their
opportunity to gain a share in this new market. Zippay will only challenge one aspect of the
Revolut model, arguably the most used aspect of the model; the instant transfer
function. Despite the delay in action, Zippay has showcased potential to disrupt the market.
It will service 5 million potential Irish customers across the three banks, AIB, BOI, and
Permanent TSB, and will be backed by the perceived security that these banks offer.


Interestingly, the EU recently introduced legislation making SEPA Instant Payments
mandatory for all EU Payment Service Providers from the 9th of October 2025. This is a
system for making cashless payments which is used across the EU, a legislation which will allow banking customers to make instant transfers using IBANs; transfers which
previously took up to one business day, will now take moments. Ironically,  Zippay is built
on the previous SEPA payment system and not the SEPA instant payment system. This is due
to Zippay being built long before the announcement of this new legislation.


The slow response of the Irish banks in creating a rival has made their new platform feature
somewhat redundant even before its initial launch. As online banking users are now able to
send instant payments with SEPA through the use of IBANs, the convenience of instant payments is lost, and instead Zippay’s success relies on the convenience of allowing users to send money with just a phone number.
However, there are certainly some obstacles to the usage of this platform which may inconvenience users, with an example being Zippay’s sending limit of 1000 EUR per day, which is also dependent on individual bank transaction limits. Meanwhile, Revolut sees no funds transfer limit. Moving forward, it will be interesting to see how Zippay can compete with “Revolut Junior” a service which allows parents to open
accounts for their children which only they can deposit money into. This has proven to be
extremely popular, with over 400,000 of Revolut’s Irish customer base being under 18 years
of age.


Will the Delayed Response be Zippay’s Downfall?
In terms of business strategy, the traditional Irish banks may have left
joining the instant payments trend too late. In Eisenhardt & Martins article “Dynamic Capabilities:
What are They?” (2000), the idea of fast-moving markets and how a firm’s ability to sense,
seize, and reconfigure matters more than static advantage, and this theory can be applied in
the case of the Irish banks. Although the traditional banks offer high levels of security and
protection, and the new services which Zippay seeks to provide will eliminate the need for
topping up a digital wallet or downloading a separate app, they still lag behind their
competitors. In 2020, Irish banks attempted to launch a similar venture called “Yippay”,
and though it had never launched due to legislative restrictions and software issues, the concept of Yippay could have potentially offered a more adequate and timely rival to Revolut.


Ultimately only time will tell, we must wait until the 2026 launch of Zippay to truly gauge its
success. The odds, however, are not in it’s favour.

The Collins Aerospace Cyber Attack – Valuable lessons to be learned in Business Continuity Planning

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Jessica Weld

A recent cyber-attack on aerospace giant Collins Aerospace, has caused widescale outages of its MUSE Software, a check in system used by some of Europe’s largest airports including Dublin Airport and London Heathrow has caused mass disruption, resulting in stranded passengers and endless flight delays, ultimately resulting in mountains of manual work for ground staff.

The EU’s Cybersecurity Agency has since confirmed that this was a malicious ransomware attack. Hackers have deliberately knocked out Collins Aerospace systems for potential monetary gain.

In a time where large ransomware attacks on vital networks and systems are becoming increasingly common, organisations must not only strengthen cybersecurity measures, but it’s becoming increasingly imperative that they also have adequate plans in place for if and when crises like this arise. 

Industry Specific View – Commercial Aviation

The Commercial Aviation industry operates on a tightly coordinated supply chain which in recent decades, has become heavily automated. An issue with one link in the chain can cause a catastrophic domino effect which can, as a result, affect many flights and thousands of passengers. 

Within the European Union, airline passengers are heavily protected against such delays under EU 261 regulations. These regulations entitle passengers to compensation for events such as delays, cancellations and missing luggage. 

Compensation agency Skycop revealed that in 2024 alone, airlines owed passengers €6 billion under EU 261 regulations. One can only imagine the cost of passenger compensation with the amount of flights and passengers affected by this cyber-attack. Alongside this, airlines will have to factor in staff overtime, the cost of repositioning crews and aircraft and additional airport fees. (EU flight delays in 2024 may cost airlines over €6 billion).

For the airline industry, the financial risks associated with such an attack are far too high to not have a robust contingency plan in place. 

The Airline Response  

The Dublin Airport Authority’s Head of Media Relations, Graeme McQueen, informed RTÉ that both Ryanair and Aer Lingus test their manual check-in processes on one flight per week.

While regular testing is useful to familiarise staff with manual processes, it is not sufficient in testing the airline’s capacity to cope with a wide-scale outage. For if the system were to fail, it’s unlikely that it does so for one flight. More often than not, outages are widescale. 

The system outage caused Aer Lingus to revert to fully manual check-in processes for all scheduled flights. As a result, queues for check-in were taking 30 to 40 minutes at times. This caused multiple flight delays and as many as 13 Aer Lingus flights were cancelled on the second day of the outage, Tuesday, September 23rd. 

Better Business Continuity Planning Practice

A fit-for-purpose business continuity plan first and foremost must require a comprehensive risk assessment of potential threats. The instructions of the business continuity plan should comprehensively respond to all of these potential threats so that the organisation is fully prepared for any eventuality.

Secondly, resilience measures are vital to business operations and must be incorporated into business continuity planning. These are the measures taken to ensure that when an incident like this occurs, the recovery time is as quick as possible. A common resilience measure would be the use of backup systems to ensure downtime is minimised. 

Regular testing of business continuity plans is vital to ensure their success in the event of an incident. Testing is important to raise staff awareness of crisis procedures so that response time is quick. Testing is also beneficial to spot any weaknesses in planning and processes so they can be rectified. 

Capacity planning is very important in business continuity planning. As previously noted, outages are usually widespread and rarely occur in single iterations. Organisations need to be prepared for the worst-case scenario and must ensure that their entire business operation can be supported by the business continuity plan in the event of an incident.

Lessons to be Learned by Airlines 

While it is known that airlines had regularly tested contingency plans in place to deal with an issue like this, it is clear that capacity was an unfortunate downfall of the incident response. This flaw wouldn’t appear in testing as usually conducted by Ryanair and Aer Lingus as they only tested on one flight a week. It is apparent that the airlines didn’t account for manpower requirements to handle manual procedures for all scheduled flights.  

Resilience measures also appear to be lacking as there is no back-up system available to assist the recovery effort. Improvement in backup systems would reduce the risk posed by such incidents and in this particular event, would prevent the enormous financial losses. 

Finally, as it almost goes without saying, tightening of cybersecurity measures should be top priority for the airlines, airports and suppliers like Collins Aerospace. In the current climate, ransomware attacks pose detrimental risks to vital, fast-moving industries like commercial aviation. In an ever developing and increasingly automated world, organisations need to prioritise investment in cybersecurity to reduce risk. 

From Principles to Profits: Investor’s Priorities Shifting in a Volatile World.

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Lauri Twomey

Short-Term Financial Gain is Resuming Priority Amongst Investors


Over the last decade, there has been an ongoing emphasis placed on sustainable investing. Increased awareness of social inequality, the climate crisis, corporate governance scandals, and advancements in digital technology have each encouraged various individuals to question where to invest their money. Currently Europe holds 85% of global sustainable funds’ net assets. This form of investing for many individuals stemmed from moral concern relating to climate change and emphasizing investing in the future, not necessarily seeking financial gain.


However, in recent times investor’s perspectives have changed. Short term financial gain is resuming the priority in investors’ portfolios. In 2021, there was a surge of sustainable investors, data from Morningstar showed sustainable investing fund inflows which also include ESG products hit 645 billion globally, a quarter of all inflows. This figure has since dropped to 36 billion from an overall 1.5 trillion in 2024. Banks are rethinking their positions in sustainable development.

Did the Corporations Across the World Ever Believe in a Sustainable Future or Did They Utilize Sustainability as a Trend to Promote Their Business?


It is evident that banks have lost faith, with portfolio managers adjusting their previous commitments of divesting from fossil fuel companies, in response to recent political issues that have put financial gain back to top priority. But sustainable investing was never a profit maximizing strategy. Banks across the world were including sustainability as one of their banks core values, investing in the future of the planet. The purpose was not financial gain for a lot of people, it was looking at the detrimental impacts that climate change would cause, with severe weather incidents becoming more prevalent and seeking ways to combat these issues .


However, after the recent US election and the current ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and Palestine, investors are back to seeking short term gains, in order to maintain competitiveness. Trump removing the US from the Paris Climate Change Agreement has influenced other dominant parties to also divert their interests in investing in the future with major financial institutions such as Blackrock, a company that once praised the ESG investing movement, to withdraw from UN sponsored climate initiatives. Trump’s administration has severely impacted climate tech through encouraging the “anti-climate narrative”, which focuses on the short term financial losses of sustainability rather than looking at how it can enhance competitiveness in the future through innovation.

The Knock-On Effect of the European Union’s Flagship Green Deal on Environment Policy


The recent Green Deal environmental policy has also impacted the EU, as lawmakers discuss adjusting their strategies regarding future developments on climate accounting rules noted in the aforementioned flagship deal, as they worry that implementing these strict regulations will reduce their competitiveness with the US and China. Two major landmark policies being reviewed are the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive and the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive. These laws were some of the first signs of legislation requiring companies to take accountability for their actions and prioritize the sustainable transition through accounting practices.

However, many companies argue that the cost of implementing these reporting requirements will affect their companies processes. Since the start of the year, countries such as France and Germany are seeking help to withhold on these sustainability reporting rules. Despite this, many groups such as the European Sustainable Investment Forum highlighted that these rules will aid investors when it comes to being able to seek out opportunities, managing risk and direct capital to an equitable and sustainable economy through encouraging transparency amongst corporations. These laws will help sustainable research, analytics and increase individual awareness on what types of businesses they are contributing to.


At the moment it’s difficult to focus on the financial aspect of sustainable investing, due to issues with monetizing climate impacts. There are many flaws in measuring and reporting , as the ESG ratings of companies vary depending on which rating agency they use, thus drawing attention to the inconsistency with the process, which results in conflicting data when investors are looking at sustainable investing. Time and resources are needed to combat these issues, but now these resources are being diverted elsewhere.

Future Demand for Sustainable Practices is Still Anticipated to Grow in the Future


Despite all of this, consumer demand for combating the climate crisis is continuing to grow. A report by Bain & Co. highlighted that due to personal experiences regarding extreme weather events, 60% of consumers are more concerned about climate change now than they were two years ago, with prime events such as Hurricane Milton and Hurricane Helen accounting for $500 billion in economic losses. The issue is that the economic losses that result from climate change will only increase. Since 2000, climate related issues have already caused 3.6 trillion in damages and once the tipping point of the planetary boundaries are crossed, there is no backtracking. The prime goal was to be resilient in the future, as managing director at Boston Consulting group Sylvain Seotarata said “if you think of the world in which we operate, there’s a high degree of uncertainty and high degree of volatility” then “in that context, it is essential to ensure that your company is able to handle these uncertainties, this volatility”, that is what resilience meant for her, explaining how long term competitiveness aligns with protecting against physical risk.


Another core group that are increasingly aware of the climate crisis is Gen Z (born between 1997-2012), a report by Bain found that they are willing to pay more for goods and services that align with their sustainability beliefs. With more and more universities educating their students on the impact of climate change and new sustainability focused courses being implemented, (particularly within business schools), sustainability demand is only going to grow. Within Trinity College Dublin, sustainable business practices are being taught to students and previous modules are being adjusted incorporating sustainability into investment modules and marketing. Many other universities are adopting similar approaches.


The world’s major leaders have neglected their responsibility to prevent the severity of the climate crisis, cutting back on regulations and influencing the “anti-climate narrative”. Banks have also highlighted to us that they never had much faith in the sustainable transition, creating mistrust among clients. While sustainable finance has many flaws in its practices, such as poor reporting procedures, the only way to combat this is investment and further research. Now is the time to push for innovation, and with significant developments in AI and other new age technologies we are now more capable than ever to help tackle key environmental issues. But if sustainable investing is ever really going to become part of every investor’s portfolio in the future, the banks must believe in it themselves.

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