Dublin has been placed third behind London and Madrid in a CBRE ranking of EMEA large tech clusters — capital cities and business centres with more than 70,000 people employed in technology.

CBRE said London’s top position is partly due to its ability to attract millennial talent. The city’s overall employment in the information and communications technology sector has grown by 20% since 2008, with its proportion of ICT employment at almost two and a half times the EU average.

Dublin’s high performance, meanwhile, is down to large and small tech occupiers expanding and looking to secure accommodation in the city.

“More than 40% of overall office take-up in Dublin in the first half of 2018 was accounted for by tech occupiers, most of whom were expanding existing operations, which is indicative of their positive experience in the Irish capital,” CBRE Executive Director Paddy Conlon said.

Meanwhile, HWBC recently reported that the Dublin office market continues to strengthen due to demand from tech companies.

“The market has been underpinned by the continuing demand from ‘big tech’, with companies like Facebook, Amazon and Salesforce all in expansion mode,” HWBC Managing Director Tony Waters said.

“Companies in the technology, telecoms and media sector dominate market take-up, consistently accounting for 40% of transactions in recent years.”

HWBC Director and Head of Offices Tony Scannell said demand from the technology sector — as well as finance and coworking — could mean take-up of office space in 2018 exceeds last year’s record level of 3.6M SF.

According to HWBC, the top three Dublin office deals in the first half of 2018 were Google’s 220K SF at Boland’s Quay, LinkedIn’s 153K SF at One Wilton Plaza and IDA’s 112K SF at Three Park Place. WeWork took the fourth and fifth spots with its deals for 99.5K SF at No 2 Dublin Landings and 74K SF at One Central Plaza.