The number of Irish billionaires rose from nine to 11 last year and their combined wealth increased by more than a third to just over €50 billion, according to Oxfam Ireland.
In a report timed to coincide with the start of the World Economic Forum, which begins on Monday in Davos, Switzerland, and to highlight growing rates of inequality worldwide, the charity said total Irish billionaire wealth stood at €50.2 billion at the end of last year, €13 billion up on the previous year.
Oxfam said the State’s billionaires saw their wealth increase by €35.6 million every day in 2024 and that 66 per cent of this wealth stemmed from cronyism, monopolistic sources or inheritance.
While the charity’s report did not name the State’s 11 billionaires, according to Forbes’s latest billionaire list, the Republic’s wealthiest person is Indian-born engineering tycoon Shapoor Mistry, who is worth an estimated $9.9 billion.
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He controls India’s engineering and construction conglomerate, Shapoorji Pallonji Group, which he inherited from his father, Pallonji Mistry, in 2022. Mr Mistry is an Irish citizen through his father, who married Irish-born Pat “Patsy” Perin Dubash.
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He is followed on the Forbes list by Stripe founders and brothers John and Patrick Collison, who are estimated to be worth $7.2 billion each. Fourth on the list is John Grayken, founder of Dallas-based private equity business Lone Star Funds and an active investor in Ireland, with an estimated net wealth of $6.9 billion.
Mr Mistry’s nephews, Firoz and Zahan Mistry, come next with fortunes of $4.9 billion each courtesy of their shareholding in Mumbai-based Tata Motors.
Kingspan founder Eugene Murtagh ($2.8 billion), telecoms magnate Denis O’Brien ($2.8 billion), heir to the Campbell’s Soup empire John Dorrance ($2.6 billion), financier Dermot Desmond ($2.2 billion) and the founder of hedge fund firm Egerton Capital, John Armitage ($1.5 billion), make up the rest, according to Forbes.
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In its Takers Not Makers report, Oxfam calculated that billionaire wealth globally surged by $2 trillion in 2024, three times faster than the year before. The charity estimated that 36 per cent of this wealth is inherited.
“We are witnessing the rise of a modern oligarchy, where wealth is used to build and consolidate political power and vice versa. Meanwhile, global poverty remains at 1990 levels,” said head of Oxfam Ireland Jim Clarken.
“Billionaires increasingly control not just economies but narratives and that is why in this report we challenge the popular perception that their vast wealth is deserved or based on merit,” he said.
“President [Donald] Trump will be a president of and for billionaires, using his power over the world’s largest economy to slash taxes for the ultrarich and megacorporations, at the expense of everyone else,” said Mr Clarken, noting the US president-elect’s team was set to be the richest ever to run the government, worth an estimated $450 billion.
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