Dentons Ireland has significantly expanded its Dublin offering with the recruitment of an established real estate team, underlining the firm’s growth ambitions in Ireland and placing the sector at the centre of its next phase of development. Dentons opened in Dublin in 2020 and has continued to add senior talent ever since.
The enlarged practice is led by partners Craig Kenny, Diarmuid Mawe and Tom Dalton, alongside a wider group of legal professionals whose collective experience spans the breadth of commercial real estate.
This appointment is not simply about headcount, it reflects a strategic focus on securing a market-leading team in a sector where clients increasingly require advisers who can combine deep local expertise with international reach. The company’s global real estate practice is built for increasingly complex, multi-jurisdictional work and Irish clients will benefit from this extensive global reach.
Eavan Saunders, founding managing partner of Dentons Ireland, says: “As a firm, we are committed to investing in the real estate sector and are thrilled to have a best-in-class real estate team in Dublin to bolster our bench in Ireland and beyond.”
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The new real estate team is just the latest chapter in the Dentons Ireland growth story. Since launching during the first Covid lockdown in Saunders’s livingroom, the firm has expanded steadily. Her growth strategy has centred on recruiting senior, well-regarded local talent and delivering high-quality advice on complex mandates, supported by the company’s global platform. Dentons Ireland now has 24 partners and will reach a headcount of 100 in Ireland before the end of 2026.
The arrival of the real estate team reflects Dentons Ireland’s focus on a sector where experience, relationships and commercial insight are critical. The Irish real estate market continues to evolve, with investment and development decisions increasingly shaped by factors such as financing structures, planning complexity, sustainability requirements and changing occupier demands.
Against this backdrop, clients require advisers who can navigate both local market conditions and the broader international context in which capital is deployed. Its global real estate platform, combined with deep local expertise in Dublin, positions the firm to support clients on increasingly complex and cross-border mandates.
Craig Kenny, real estate partner at Dentons Ireland, says: “The opportunity at Dentons is to build on an already successful team within a firm that combines international reach with a strong Irish presence. That is increasingly important as real estate mandates become more cross-border in nature, involving international capital, overseas investors and multi-jurisdictional portfolios.”
For Dentons Ireland, real estate will be central to the firm’s Irish offering. In a market where investors, developers, lenders and occupiers want both responsiveness on the ground and strength across borders, that combination is likely to prove a powerful one.
