We need your help now
Support from readers like you keeps The Journal open.
You are visiting us because we have something you value. Independent, unbiased news that tells the truth. Advertising revenue goes some way to support our mission, but this year it has not been enough.
If you've seen value in our reporting, please contribute what you can, so we can continue to produce accurate and meaningful journalism. For everyone who needs it.
Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
By continuing, you are indicating that you accept our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.
COLM LYON, THE chief executive of Dublin payments firm Fire, has made no secret of the company’s dedication to the UK market.
The UK accounts for about 60-70% of Fire’s business, he said, and the company operates much of its sales and marketing from its London office.
Much has been made of the steps that financial services companies had to make to keep access to the European market but firms have needed to take similar steps in the reverse direction too.
As the clock was ticking down on Brexit, Fire obtained an electronic money licence in the UK last year to ensure continued operations. Meanwhile, it holds approval in Ireland that is passported across the EU.
Now that Brexit has finally happened, Lyon said that Fire is well-positioned to operate in the UK and Europe as a “dual regulated entity”.
However, the graft wasn’t easy: “All in all, it’s a lot of work and I think we’re all glad that 2019 is behind us”.
There were multiple elements to shoring up the UK business, from getting the relevant licensing to ensuring the books were in order.
“The licence is one thing but then you actually have to change all your systems and technology,” Lyon said.
“You have to maintain in effect two separate books. We can’t have our UK customers’ money commingling with that of our EU customers anymore, they have to be completely separate.”
Further, there’s a recruitment hurdle as the company needed the right people on the ground to steward these changes into being.
“It’s not for the light-hearted,” Lyon said on the whole process.
Strategies
Donegal data analytics startup Cerebreon, which develops software for insolvency firms, made a similar bet on the UK in the face of the uncertainty.
Chief executive Gillian Doyle said that the market has a glut of these insolvency firms to target with its product and it was something that couldn’t be ignored. It has since opened an office in Birmingham and Doyle spends much of her time in London.
“The type of insolvency firms that we target are high volume consumer insolvency firms,” she said. “They would deal with any sort of debt arrangement for consumers and they would typically be seeing more than 500 new cases a month.”
Cerebreon wouldn’t have been able to establish as solid a flow of clients in Ireland, she explained, but proving the business in the UK provides a solid base to bring to other countries.
“From our own sales generation and leads, we’re looking at the Irish market through one of the main banks there and also the Finnish market through an early stage engagement that we have.”
Cerebreon had some technical points to consider when devising its strategy in post-Brexit Britain.
“Our servers are in Dublin, our back-up is in the UK so if the regulation changes that the data needs to sit and reside in the UK that’s not a problem for us. We’ve built that into our business continuity and disaster recovery plan,” she said.
The company’s biggest risk, Doyle told Fora, is in currency exposure – its revenue is in sterling while its costs are in euro – which can jolt at any time in the face of market uncertainty.
For Trezeo, it knew what it was getting itself into when it set up in a mere month after the EU referendum in 2016.
Trezeo is an ‘income smoothing’ fintech company that effectively gives loans to gig economy workers, providing them with a steady income flow when gigs might dip. The money is repaid when work picks up.
The UK market is by far the biggest for gig workers in Europe, Garrett Cassidy, its chief executive, said.
With Brexit going on in the background, he decided to focus the company solely on the UK. If circumstances had been different, Trezeo may have launched in a European country at the same time under the same effort.
“We looked at the UK market and decided it’s a big enough market for us to build the business and scale it and get to a point of later-stage funding before we have to try and deal with a second market,” Cassidy remarked.
In 2020, the UK will remain Trezeo’s focus, he said. Then maybe come 2021, it will re-examine the EU options but, much like Fire, that will require a dual strategy around licensing and putting staff in place.
Dual opportunities
The past four years have been defined by uncertainty and while the UK has officially left the European Union that uncertainty remains.
An EU-UK trade deal and an agreement between the sides on data transfers and data protection will have wide-ranging effects on all businesses.
Fire’s Lyon added that this presents an opportunity at the same time. The structure the company has in place now means that it’s “more than business as usual” in taking on the UK and Europe concurrently.
“We’re one of a small number of firms that are dual-regulated. In a way, we now see ourselves looking at opportunities which we can fulfil because we are regulated in both jurisdictions,” he said.
“I don’t see it all as back office (tasks), I see it as opening up opportunities now that there will be two separate jurisdictions in place.”
Get our Daily Briefing with the morning’s most important headlines for innovative Irish businesses.
Written by Jonathan Keane and posted on Fora.ie
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
Dublin GAA team doing a recon on Kerry training sessions is the likely explanation. No expense spared from the Dublin county board.
More likely that Enda and co were spying on water charge protesters.
Ha ha that put a smile on my face better than climbing up on a pole or a wall any day.
But let there be no doubt; Ireland is a neutral country.
What would happen if our spy planes where flying over Washington.
We don’t have spy planes. Our navy did sunk a yacht recently in the bay take of the Atlantic
Ireland’s Fiscal Advisory Council would say “come home soon”
It’s not a spy plane it’s an air traffic control and monitoring plane, iinformation from the Snowden and Wikileaks material has demonstrated Ireland has not been targeted by the NSA, or military intel either.
Americans have other countries planes over their airspace all the time actually, in fact NORAD , the US home command base where NORTHCOM is stationed, is a joint US-Canada entity and Canadian jets and AWACS often patrol US airspace as part of their duties, they did so more famously on 9.11
If only the CIA didn’t take out Frank he’d know the real reason
Ask Horgay he should know, cue Pat O’Dwyer with a copy and paste article fresh from the tinfoil press or FSB HQ :-)
Alan , you’re right ,frank would’ve known what was going on !
Frank would say it’s a cruise missile not a plane.
He was the pilot.
I miss frank and his mathematical equations. ….helped out so much on countdown
Not a very good spy plane if a lad was able to spot it with an app on his phone.
It’s not a spy plane, it’s air traffic control in the sky, it’s designed to watch aircraft not to scan the ground.
Unfortunately your idiot brain does not check with reality. The article is about a spy plane.
I hope you’re being sarcastic Sinister, otherwise you’re an incredible tool. The E-3 Sentry is by no means a spy plane and the author was being incredibly sensationalist with the headline.
E-3′s are an essential component of BVR tactics and battlefield management. Calling it ATC is just, if not more disingenuous than calling it a “spy plane”.
@Sinister Dissident: The powerful radar aboard AWACS can be used to locate Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAPs). Chemtrailing assists with this activity.
Hopefully gathering Intel on potential ISIS insurgents I would imagine our intelligence is well below par.
Well I might be stupid but at least I’m not attractive !
really?
Sure where do you think enda is getting the tip off on the Rock of cashel is a target…. From the guy with the 2 pints in his hands?!?!
They are scanning for homemade clocks which mught be used to be timing devices for home bombs which have no explosives.
Danger lurks everywhere. I hear that some secondary school students are assembling nuclear bombs as school projects.
You’ll find with the odd exception (usually army enlisted) US military are not as panic striken and constantly wetting themselves over ”threats” the way wannabies like mall cops and local PDs are.
Most of them are not like that, their populations just trapped in a broken system and it’s kinda ironic…cos IMO with them living in a police state now, and a state of constant fear where even that police state does not make them feel safe…the Islamists have won hands down. They could not have destroyed the IDEA of America, but the Americans did it for them
HANDS OFF OUR JOHN JOE!!!
@Tony Daly: The powerful radar aboard AWACS can be used to locate Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAPs). Chemtrailing assists with this activity.
Did you let the intern write the article?
It’s an AWACS . It’s a early warning and control aircraft. It’s not a spy plane, bad headline that.
@mopics: The powerful radar aboard AWACS can be used to locate Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAPs). Chemtrailing assists with this activity.
Yeeeeeeeeaaaah we’ve hit oil!
They were looking for intelligence in Leinster house. Failed mission.
Pesky Americans
I can picture you outside waving your fist furiously at the sky while saying that.
That’s exactly what I did jamsy
Christ lads. Second paragraph. We know by now that your eyes don’t see it but surely your fingers must cop on to the sh!te that ye type.
Spying on the Paul Murphy and the rest of the Jobstown mob….cos the whole world is against them like….
Rumour has it DOB was flying the plane too btw….just saying….
Impossible to fight an enemy that doesn’t sleep (or work)!
The E3 Sentry is not so much a “Spy Plane” as it is a Flying Control Tower/ Radar. Its main purpose is to provide Command and Control in an Air Battle.
Exactly. Keep in mind many of these were built in the 80s when it was possible the USSR was going to do it’s “7 days to the Rhine, 9 days to Lyon” plan, so they assumed every NATO air base would be hit, the tarmacs with shredder penetration bombs and the towers taken down for good measure.
The plan was to use ‘recovery’ air ports so you could send the bombers to fly home to civilian airports if their base had been hit (Even with nukes) , the likes of f-15s to long stretches of highway in rural areas and vertical fighters like the Harrier or I guess now that f-35 (aka “that f____g death trap” as a friend who piloted one calls is) they could land anywhere….fields. But with towers gone how do you coorinate all this? Planes like that, and they can fly around so they’re a harder target.
the corrs are back together and Jim is a qualified pilot. just sayin’.
Here’s a crazy idea: spying!!!!
Spying on what exactly?
Here is a more rational idea doing air traffic control and management for the 10 B1 bombers that crossed Irish airspace that day!
It’s primary role air space and craft management shocking o know but there you go
HERES ANOTHER crazy idea, send a message to the huge Russian bombers loaded with nuclear weapons that often cross into our airspace that while we don’t have a huge air force our cousins across the pond do and are quite capable of keeping an eye on us.
You’d think dettering them coming back would be in our interests, if for no other reason than planes flying around in peacetime with nukes on them tend to get into accidents as several Russian and US examples of the past have shown, do you want some 5MT missile falling from a faulty (and most of them are these days) creaking Russian bomber and spilling radioactive material all over one of our cities? They do make a lot of stupid decisions with their military (*COUGH* IRAQ) but they’ve also done plenty of good with it
Actually the Bear’s are pretty well maintained and are currently undergoing an upgrade. Plus there is little or no evidence to say the flights they are making are with Nuclear weapons on board
But if it did crash and the bomb survived, which is quite likely. At least we could say we now have WMD haha
^ This guy. I like this guy.
It was in our sky again this evening. Actually at the same time they were discussing it in newstalk ;)
@James Rowan: Combine this activity with chemtrails, ‘they’ are looking for UAPs, that is Unidentified Aerial Phenomena.
As long as they don’t empty the toilets or crash who cares?
Sales of tinfoil are going to rocket.
More victims of “Big Tinfoil”.
I think the FCA should have shot it down
we should have shot it down.
With what? Pikes?
Jason we have 100s of state of the art missiles, FYI
This is not 1985 anymore, we might not have an airforce but we do have a very good military for our size
Basically if you don’t have control in the air your military is in big trouble. Standard military doctrine…
depends where you are from.
The Irish Army couldn’t beat the itinerants out of Galway.
weve a few batteries of RBS 70 missile launchers. A LOT less than 100 ACTUAL missiles also.
These are VERY short range weapons (effective for short range point defence) and would pose no threat to an AWACS
WWIII imminent Shannon and Ireland is a target I’m afraid as the U.S. use Shannon airport as a stopover…. Tensions raising between Russia and the U.S. And China the three superpowers, east against the west the elite are on plan endgame.
Tescos have a deal on the tinfoil. Time to stock up John.
Gordon think up of some new material and then get back to me thanks
How about aluminum foil then?
Maybe they type of training they were doing is not permitted on US citizens.
ah John !!. don’t just leave it at that .. keep going….what type of training would they be doiing that wouldn’t be permitted on US citizens?
All part of the proxy war thats going on with Russia wake up folks!!!
Don’t worry the Yanks haven’t quite gotten the idea, that spy planes are suppose to be difficult to detect, the clue is in the word SPY !
The Irish media can’t tell the difference between a command and control aircraft and a Spy aircraft such as the U2, p-3 Orion, Sentinal, global hawk
When the JFK was in they could not tell the diff between a nuclear powered aircraft carrier and an aircraft carrier with nuclear weapons on board, so they got themselves into a big hysterical panic attack over it, and we ended up with the farce of RBB and co protesting the presence of nuclear weapons that were locked in cages in their base back in Norfolk.
I heard it over limerick city real loud knew it had to be some sort of American plane.. have heard similar before too way louder than any other planes that pass over to land in shannon and this one flew around for ages!!
Most likely watching all the ISIS terrorists welcomed in..?
Sure they should have dropped in for a cuppa.
I think they were keeping an eye on the UVF.
yawn
NSA…
Google Earth?
Looking for the island of Hy-brasil?
Or for scale gas???
They were just taking a shortcut back home for tea.
Is everyone actually sure it was an American aircraft. The RAF have a number of these aircraft and they are probably based a lot closer than the Americans are. Just because it’s made in America, old Boeing 707 base), does not mean it is American. They do not need to overfly the country to see what they want to see.
Taking pictures of my ass, the poor donkey…
have your say