Irish Life has spent close to €200 million redeveloping its headquarters in Dublin’s inner city in a project that increased office space by about 40 per cent.
Group chief executive Declan Bolger told The Irish Times the project cost came in at the “northern end” of a range of €100 million to €200 million he initially outlined in response to questions. It has increased the footprint of campus by about 40 per cent to 19,436sq m (209,207sq ft), he added.
The completed headquarters, being officially opened on Tuesday, will house up to 3,000 employees from Irish Life and its Canadian parent Great-West Lifeco’s other businesses in Europe, has been designed to achieve leading international accreditations for sustainability and wellbeing, the company said.
Founded in Dublin 1 in 1939, Irish Life has been headquartered on Abbey Street Lower for almost 50 years. Rather than pursuing a full rebuild, Irish Life has retained and built on the existing structure.
RM Block
“We were founded in Dublin 1, and when we looked at the future of our headquarters, we made a deliberate choice to stay, to invest and to give this building a new life. The result is a nearly zero energy workplace, built to the highest standards of sustainability and wellbeing,” Bolger said.
The State bought Irish Life in 2011 from PTSB, then known as Irish Life & Permanent, for €1.3 billion to limit the taxpayer bailout bill for the mortgage-focused lender as it required €4 billion of capital. It subsequently sold the business in 2013 for the same price to Great-West Lifeco.
Irish Life has grown significantly since then, as the economy rebounded from the crash and the business invested in a series of acquisitions.
In 2018, the group bought Invesco, the Republic’s largest independent corporate pensions and investments consultancy, and followed in quick succession by buying a number of other intermediaries, including Acumen & Trust, APT financial advice companies and Harvest Financial Services. Irish Life ultimately rolled these into a stand-alone wealth management business in 2023 called Unio.
In 2021, the group paid €230 million for Ark Life, the former AIB life insurance arm that stopped taking new business in 2012 and where Irish Life had been the administrator of policies and manager of investments. The seller was ReAssure Limited, a UK company that specialises in managing closed books. Great-West Lifeco also entered a life and pensions joint venture with AIB, called AIB Life, in 2023.
