Moore Ireland has acquired Cork chartered accountancy practice TA Sheehan & Co, taking its South Mall team past 100 professionals, a deal that matters broadly because it strengthens the country's third-largest office of an international accounting network, and matters specifically to accountancy professionals because it shows global network membership, not just private equity backing, driving the same consolidation pattern reshaping Irish practices.

Moore Ireland is an accountancy and business advisory firm with offices in Dublin, Cork, Galway and Dun Laoghaire, employing more than 280 people, part of the Moore Global network since becoming aligned with London firm Moore Kingston Smith in 2023.

TA Sheehan & Co is a Cork-based statutory audit firm founded by Tom Sheehan in 1988, with David Butler joining as partner in 1992 and John Collins in 2004, providing audit, accounts, business advisory and taxation services.

Moore Ireland managing partner Ned Murphy called the merger a great coup for Moore Ireland, describing it as part of the firm's ongoing buy-and-build approach across the Irish market.

The deal closes a circle for TA Sheehan's founder: Tom Sheehan began his career in 1984 at VF Nathans, the Cork firm that later became Moore Ireland, before founding his own practice four years later, and now returns to the wider organisation more than four decades on.

Murphy said demand is rising specifically in areas such as cybersecurity, gender pay gap reporting, funding, technology applications and AI, work he described as increasingly extending beyond the expertise and capacity of traditional smaller practices, a structural driver behind Moore Ireland's acquisitions of DHKN in Galway and HSOC in Dun Laoghaire during 2025 as well as TA Sheehan now.

Unlike the private equity-backed platforms driving much of the sector's consolidation, Moore Ireland's growth runs through membership of the Moore Global network, giving smaller Irish practices a route to scale and specialist capability without taking on external investor ownership.

For the sector, TA Sheehan's move illustrates that independent firms weighing succession or growth increasingly have network membership, not just private equity, as a credible path to the resources larger regulatory demands now require.

Source: Irish Examiner