A notable feature of the Irish M&A market in recent years has been consolidation in a number of sectors including pharmacies, insurance brokerages and accountancy practices. Indeed, in Ireland, sector consolidation has been a key theme in many recent major deals. But is bigger always better?
Companies that were once comfortable being mid-sized players are now asking themselves whether they can truly compete without scaling up, says Paddy Quinlan, corporate M&A partner at legal firm Taylor Wessing.
“Businesses in Ireland and elsewhere are increasingly recognising that scale matters,” Quinlan says. “In today’s competitive landscape, consolidation has become less of a strategic option and more of a survival imperative in many sectors.”
Quinlan notes that private equity has had a major influence on this trend, particularly through so-called roll-up strategies, which involve acquiring multiple smaller companies in fragmented sectors and combining them into a single, more valuable platform. “We’ve seen this approach in areas such as financial services, healthcare, software and professional services,” he says.
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Domestic examples include big consolidators such as Fairstone, Arachas, Howden and Village Vets, while internationally, the likes of Grant Thornton and Azets continue to consolidate in the professional services sector.
“More broadly, we have seen large Irish companies such as Smurfit Kappa, Greencore, CRH and Flutter achieve scale, and new markets, through international strategic acquisitions,” he adds.
In 2025, the professional services sector saw a consolidation approach driving activity, with legal, accountancy and consultancy firms generating the highest volume of merger notifications for the second consecutive year. Quinlan also notes that consolidation in the engineering services sector continues apace, with consistent investor appetite for businesses servicing the likes of data centres and power infrastructure.
Colin Morgan, chief executive of Key Capital, says consolidation in sectors such as insurance broking and accountancy has been a key theme in recent years and is a trend he expects to see continue.
“However, other sectors we have seen heightened consolidation activity in recently include the independent financial adviser (IFA) and wealth management sector and the heating, ventilation, air-conditioning and refrigeration (HVACR) sector,” he says.
In the IFA and wealth management sector activity is strong, with more than 900 total deals completed across Britain and Ireland since 2020. While the vast majority of these deals were completed in the UK, the Republic is currently experiencing heightened levels of interest in the sector driven by UK private equity-backed platforms looking for further growth, as well as indigenous consolidators, Morgan says. “For example, Key Capital advised Tara Financial on its sale to Gallivan Financial, an independent consolidator based in Kerry – this deal marked Gallivan’s third acquisition in 2025 and its fifth deal to date.”
Private equity-fuelled consolidation within the legal services sector in the UK has been accelerating and Morgan believes it is poised to be the next driver of professional services M&A activity in the Republic. “Transactions involving private equity have risen sharply, climbing from nine deals in 2023 to 15 deals in 2025, reflecting an increasing willingness to deploy capital in a sector that has been traditionally resistant to outside investment,” he says.
Growth by acquisition is also highly evident in the healthcare sector, says Maria O’Brien, partner in William Fry’s corporate/M&A department. “Consolidation in the sector has accelerated year on year and, although in some of the subsectors consolidation is not at the levels previously seen, the wider sector continues to see a great deal of consolidation,” she says. Pharmacy, medical and dental groups have been the drivers of this activity, with Centric Health, Dental Care Ireland and Uniphar being particularly active.
In all sectors, the strategic benefits of consolidation are driving the financial deals underpinning these transactions. “These include additional services, product offerings and customer bases, in addition to scale and integration synergies, in terms of both cost and revenue opportunities arising from consolidation,” says O’Brien.
Taylor Wessing’s Quinlan agrees that the logic for consolidation can be compelling. “Consolidation should deliver cost efficiencies, broader service offerings, enhanced bargaining power with suppliers and, often, access to, and capital for, better talent and technology – investment in generative AI tools being a good example of the latter,” he says.
For Irish family-owned businesses, particularly those facing succession challenges, being acquired as part of a roll-up can provide liquidity while also preserving employment and often accelerating growth.
Private-equity-backed roll-ups typically move quickly and decisively, Quinlan points out. “They identify fragmented markets, establish a platform company, then rapidly acquire competitors or complementary businesses,” he says. “The Irish market’s relatively small size means that achieving meaningful consolidation can happen faster than in larger jurisdictions and we expect this trend to continue. For Irish businesses, particularly in fragmented sectors, the consolidation wave presents both opportunity and urgency.”
William Fry’s O’Brien agrees, noting that the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission’s latest M&A report points to continued momentum in deal-making and further consolidation across key sectors.
“We expect consolidation to remain buoyant in the sectors where it has been a feature, and in some cases ramp up, as the factors that have made these businesses attractive for investment and suitable for consolidation continue to be central to any growth strategy aligned with increasing regulatory and technology factors,” she says. “Substantial uninvested capital has resulted in private equity firms looking at the Irish mid-market and, whilst there remains a great deal of instability at a macroeconomic level, the microeconomic trends suggest that targets will remain keen to explore acquisition.”
