Analysis: Ireland's dominance in the global aircraft leasing industry is a genuine pillar of the Irish economy, but it's not a fixture that runs itself
Almost nobody boarding a flight thinks about who technically owns the aircraft they're sitting in. In most cases, the answer runs back through Dublin. Irish-based lessors now manage around 65% of the world's leased commercial aircraft fleet by value, almost always through special purpose vehicles holding title to a single aircraft, taking advantage of Irish tax and legal structuring built for exactly this purpose. It's a position built over three decades and now, per this year's industry reporting, entering a genuinely different phase - not because Ireland's grip is loosening, but because the ground underneath the industry has shifted.
How did Ireland end up running this industry in the first place?
Not by accident, and not recently. Ireland's position rests on legal and tax architecture built up since the 1980s, formalised further when the country ratified the Cape Town Convention, effective here from 1 March 2006. Dublin-based Aviareto was established as the Convention's official International Registry - the global database recording ownership and security interests in aircraft - which gives Irish courts exclusive jurisdiction over disputes involving the Registry itself. Ireland also adopted "Alternative A", the Convention's most creditor-friendly insolvency remedy, guaranteeing lessors repossession within a fixed 60-day window if an airline collapses.
That legal architecture was tested for real after Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, though not quite as it's sometimes told. Most Western-leased aircraft stranded in Russia were never recovered - Moscow blocked their return, leaving lessors to pursue insurance claims covering losses estimated at around $2.5 billion instead. A significant share of that litigation has played out in Dublin's Commercial Court, with some lessors reaching settlements over the trapped aircraft rather than getting the planes back. It's messier than a clean repossession story, but arguably a better test: when a genuine, multi-billion-euro crisis hit, international counterparties trusted Dublin's courts to referee it.
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From RTÉ Radio 1's Oliver Callan, ninety years since Ireland's first commercial flights
What's actually straining underneath a dominant position?
Supply, not demand. According to PwC Ireland's 2026 Aviation Finance Outlook, airline profitability is steady and demand is strong, but engine and MRO capacity remains the critical bottleneck across the industry. Retirements are being deferred because replacements aren't available fast enough, and lease rates have risen roughly 15% since before the pandemic as a result. Add a wave of consolidation among leasing companies, and the picture is a sector that's financially healthy but structurally squeezed - flush on paper, stuck in the workshop in practice.
What could actually be done about that - starting now?
In the short term, Ireland doesn't control the engine and MRO bottleneck directly - that's an aerospace manufacturing problem playing out globally. What policy and industry bodies can control is keeping the country the easiest, fastest place to close a lease transaction while that squeeze persists: resourcing the Commercial Division of the High Court to handle complex disputes quickly, since speed and predictability are exactly what convinced counterparties to trust Dublin during the Russia litigation, and holding tax and regulatory certainty steady while margins are tight.
The Irish Aviation Authority's launch of MySRS in November 2025, a digital platform replacing paper-based aircraft registration, is a small but useful example of that housekeeping - unglamorous modernisation that keeps a decades-old advantage from looking dated.
The honest read is that Ireland's dominance is real and well-earned, but not a fixture that runs itself
In the medium term, over the next three to five years, the more interesting shift is around talent and technology rather than law. Generative AI is emerging as a factor in how lessors manage portfolios, favouring whichever hub builds the skilled workforce to use it well, not just the one hosting the head offices - an advantage that has to be built the same deliberate way the legal framework was, rather than assumed.
Longer term, over the next decade, the structural question is diversification. A hub built almost entirely around leasing conventional passenger jets is exposed if the industry's centre of gravity shifts - toward sustainable aviation fuel financing, newer aircraft categories, or a rival jurisdiction competing seriously for the business.
Nothing in this year's reporting suggests that's imminent, but the same reports describing Ireland's position as "undisputed" also note that sustaining it requires the infrastructure to keep evolving, not standing still on thirty-year-old advantages. Taken together, the honest read is that Ireland's dominance is real and well-earned, but not a fixture that runs itself - it was built through deliberate choices, decades apart, and needs the same kind of maintenance now that the industry's actual bottleneck has moved from finance to hardware.
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From RTÉ Radio 1's Drivetime, regional development with flights
Why should this matter beyond the industry itself?
Because this isn't just a financial curiosity - it's a genuine pillar of the Irish economy, supporting thousands of skilled jobs in law, finance and aircraft management, and a meaningful slice of corporate tax revenue, largely invisible to the public it funds. Global airline profits are forecast to reach roughly $41 billion in 2026, and a meaningful share of that is financed through Dublin. Whether that's still true a decade from now depends less on any single headline than on whether this less visible infrastructure keeps getting the attention its economic role deserves.
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The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
