Meet Ireland's 11 Billionaires and Discover Their Astonishing Net Worth

The total wealth of Ireland’s billionaires stood at $54.4 billion (€46.3 billion) at the end of last year, up 5 per cent from $51.8 billion over 12 months, according to a new report from Oxfam, which bases its list on the influential finance magazine, Forbes. Ireland’s billionaires are richer than 66 per cent of the population, or 3,468,311 people combined. It takes 7.3 hours for the average Irish billionaire to make the average person’s annual income. The average billionaire could buy 37 tonnes of gold with their wealth. This year’s list features 11 individuals, but who are they and what are they worth? Patrick and John Collison Taking the first two spots on the list are Limerick-born tech moguls Patrick and John Collison, each with an estimated fortune of $10.1 billion, up from $7.2 billion the previous year. The brothers founded payments company Stripe in 2010, coming up with a simple way for start-ups to accept online payments with just a few lines of code. Since then, the San Francisco and Dublin-headquartered company has developed a range of products that make it easier for companies doing business online. Their first payday came in 2008 when they sold their company, Auctomatic, for more than €3 million. The company last year saw its valuation climb to $106.7 billion, passing its previous peak of $95 billion in 2021. Stripe has built an extensive payments infrastructure for companies and handles billions of dollars in transactions each year. In its latest update, the company said businesses generated $1.4 trillion in total payment volume in 2024, up 38 per cent year-on-year. John Grayken Third on the list is Boston-born private equity boss John Grayken, who founded Dallas-based firm Lone Star Funds in 1995 before becoming an Irish citizen in 1999. Following the 2008 financial crisis, Lone Star was an active buyer of distressed assets in the Republic, snapping up, among other things, a €650 million portfolio of non-performing commercial property loans from the EBS loan book in 2012. The publicity-shy Mr Grayken, who resides in London, is valued at $7.3 billion, up from $6.9 billion the previous year. The Mistry family Down to fourth place from the top of last year’s list is Shapoor Mistry, the owner of Indian construction and engineering giant Shapoorji Palonji. He inherited control of the 160-year-old group from his father, Palonji Mistry, who died as an Irish citizen in 2022, aged 93. Like his father, Shapoor Mistry is a low-key figure. He shares his fortune with the family of his late brother, Cyrus Mistry, who also died in 2022. He is valued at $7.1 billion, down from $9.9 billion the previous year. The Mistry family owns an 18.4 per cent stake in Tata Sons, a holding company in the $165 billion revenue Indian conglomerate Tata Group, which includes, among other things, steel producers, chemical manufacturers and hospitality businesses. Cyrus Mistry’s sons Zahan ($3.6 billion) and Firoz Mistry ($3.5 billion), who hold shares in Mumbai-based Tata Motors, were listed as the fifth and sixth wealthiest Irish citizens last year. Their wealth increased from $3.1 billion and $3 billion respectively. John Dorrance An heir to the Campbell’s Soup empire, American-born billionaire John Dorrance emigrated to Ireland in the mid-1990s, swapping a ranch in Wyoming for Dublin. That was around the same time he sold his stake in the company his grandfather helped build: he invented the formula for Campbell’s condensed soup. The move is estimated to have netted him about $720 million. He was granted Irish citizenship in 1995 and is a regular name on the Forbes rich lists. Mr Dorrance is seventh on the list and worth $3.2 billion, up from $2.6 billion the year before. Denis O’Brien Telco businessman Denis O’Brien is ranked eighth with an estimated worth of $3.1 billion, up from $2.8 billion. Mr O’Brien first hit the headlines in 1995 when Esat won the State’s second mobile phone licence, in a surprise result of the competition. The Moriarty tribunal later found that Michael Lowry, as minister for communications at the time, had “secured the winning” of the competition for the mobile licence for Esat. Mr O’Brien has consistently denied any wrongdoing. By 2000, he had sold out of Esat, earning him personally about €292 million. Mr O’Brien later attempted to recreate his former success in the Caribbean with Digicel. The business propelled him to billionaire status; between 2007 and 2015, he received at least $1.9 billion in Digicel dividends. But Digicel became hugely indebted, which eventually led to a restructuring deal in 2023 that wrote off $1.7 billion from Digicel’s debt, leaving Mr O’Brien with 10 per cent of the business. Mr O’Brien’s interests previously extended to media, establishing Communicorp, which owned radio stations around Europe, and building up a shareholding in Independent News & Media (INM). He sold his stake in the latter to Mediahuis for a reported €43.5 million in 2019 and Communicorp to Bauer Media Audio in 2021. Eugene Murtagh Coming in ninth is Eugene Murtagh, who founded building materials manufacturer Kingspan Group in 1965. He owns about 15 per cent of the Dublin- and London-listed company, which primarily sells insulation products for commercial and industrial projects. The Cavan-based company would go on to float on the Irish Stock Exchange with a value of £20 million, later expanding to a global business with a series of acquisitions that included CRH’s European insulation business and ThyssenKrupp Steel’s construction division. Kingspan has 212 manufacturing facilities in 80 countries, and generated revenue of more than $8.6 billion in 2024. Mr Murtagh stayed at the helm until 2005, when he was succeeded as chief executive of the company by his son Gene, and stayed on as chairman and non-executive director until 2021. He is estimated to be worth $2.6 billion, down from $2.8 billion. Dermot Desmond Cork-born financier Dermot Desmond, who is 10th, started out in banking before striking out on his own. In 1981, he founded independent brokerage NCB Stockbrokers, which he sold for $39 million in 1994 and started private equity firm International Investment & Underwriting. The investment company has stakes in travel software firm Datalex, Mountain Province Diamonds, Barchester Healthcare, and Glasgow soccer club Celtic. Mr Desmond was later part of a consortium that bought Baltimore Technologies, and invested in everything from hotels – Sandy Lane in Barbados – to gaming, with Betdaq, a business that was later sold to Ladbrokes. He has also invested in London City Airport, a risky venture at the time, but one that proved profitable when he sold it for a reported £750 million in 2006. He is now worth about $2.3 billion, up from $2.2 billion. John Armitage Closing out the list is British-born John Armitage, the chief investment officer and co-founder of Egerton Capital, who began his career in 1981 at Morgan Grenfell Asset Management, ascending the ranks and becoming a director in 1991. He established Egerton in 1994 with Irish-American financier William Bollinger, and is now worth an estimated $1.5 billion, unchanged from the previous year, chiefly due to the investment company, which has generated tens of billions in profit since it was founded. The Eton-educated investor became an Irish citizen in 2018, perhaps in response to Britain’s impending exit from the European Union. Mr Armitage opposed the move, donating what was described as a “significant sum” to the campaign to keep Britain in the European bloc.