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After completing a Bachelor of Commerce in Accounting at UCD and an MA in Accounting at LIT, Aoife joined Dalata Hotel Group as an Accounting and Tax Associate. She developed broad experience across accounting and tax functions whilst also achieving her ACA and CTA qualifications. Aoife currently works as a Tax Analyst with IPL in Dublin.
Why did you choose a career in tax, and why did you decide to train in industry rather than following the well-trodden Big 4 route?
Accounting has always been part of my family — my parents are both accountants — so being an accountant was a very visible career option. For a long time, I resisted it and told myself I wouldn’t do accounting! It wasn’t until I interned at KPMG that I started exploring my path. I knew audit wasn’t for me, so I tried risk consulting, thinking it would be more exciting.
I attended a PwC open day, which led to a tax interview. I was offered a position on the grad programme, but later I explored industry options and found Dalata through a basketball contact. Their grad programme offered a diverse experience: a year in group finance, a year in hotel operations, and a year in internal audit. It felt like a better fit for me, given my background in a smaller business, than joining a massive intake at a Big 4 firm. I interviewed, received the offer, and chose Dalata.
When COVID hit, I started in head office, working concurrently on the tax and financial reporting teams from day one. About six months in, I decided to pursue tax exams while also continuing the accounting qualification. Throughout the grad contract, I was torn between accounting and tax. I ultimately chose tax as my first role post-qualifying because I enjoyed the challenge, the constantly changing environment, and the career flexibility it offered. I also continue to enjoy accounting — I lead much of the provisioning work — so I get the best of both worlds, balancing debits and credits with the dynamic nature of tax.
Taking the Dalata contract over a Big 4 contract has been my best career decision to date. The programme was so personalised and supportive and had a profound impact on me as an employee.
You mentioned choosing tax because of its ever-changing nature. Can you explain what that means in your day-to-day role?
Globalisation and regimes like Pillar Two mean there’s constant change. AI and industry developments are making tax more strategic, giving it a seat at the table at CFO-1 level rather than under finance. There’s more cross-border business, but also more compliance and strategic decision-making — from Country by Country Reporting to interest limitation rules and analysis.
How would you define success in a tax career?
Success in tax, for me, is being the person who creates a voice and awareness of tax within the business. Tax is becoming more strategic and plays a bigger role, but it doesn’t yet have decades of visibility or integration behind it. Often, you’re still navigating historical norms where tax was siloed.
Being successful means developing your own knowledge and skills so you can put tax at the forefront of key decision-makers’ minds. It involves influencing the business, ensuring tax considerations are part of strategic planning, and adapting your approach depending on the organisation’s culture and how tax has historically been viewed. Essentially, success is about bringing tax into the heart of the business, making it visible, relevant, and integrated.
What key skills are needed to be successful in tax?
Effective communication and strong relationship-building are critical. Tax professionals rely on having eyes and ears across the business, which only happens when trusted relationships are in place. By staying connected, you can spot emerging issues, upcoming deals, or operational changes early, often before they formally surface. Maintaining those relationships is just as important: clearly communicating priorities, managing competing demands, and being mindful of others’ pressures helps build credibility and goodwill. Even small actions, like sending a quick acknowledgement email, reinforce responsiveness and keep collaboration running smoothly.
The ability to translate technical tax into business-relevant language is essential. Educating non-tax colleagues and framing messages around their priorities ensures the information lands. You need to align tax advice with the needs of different departments and understand its impact on their teams. It’s about knowing the business and the people, how a tax decision will affect workloads, processes, or outcomes, so problems are anticipated and decisions are proactive rather than reactive.
Is there any technology you use now that you didn’t use when you were starting your career, and that has become central to your day-to-day work?
Technology is an area I’m actively working to improve. Tools like Copilot—whether for building Excel formulas, drafting emails, or summarising technical material—are genuinely useful and can speed up day‑to‑day work. But they also come with risks, especially for younger professionals like me who trained in industry and may not have the same depth of traditional tax research experience. It’s easy for technology to become a shortcut, so I’ve been encouraged to work on the core skills — reading legislation, analysing guidance and developing my own judgement – rather than relying solely on AI outputs, which can pull from unreliable sources. For me, the goal is to use technology as an enabler, not a replacement for the foundational technical skills every tax professional needs.
From a systems perspective, we also use Power BI for reporting and analytics, integrated with our ERP system and manufacturing machines. Our key decision makers can see near-real-time data on machine activity, downtime, and production volumes, which is extremely valuable for business insights.
In the tax team, we are exploring automation for manual tasks, such as provisioning, and have implemented LocTax, a tax compliance management system. This helps track hundreds of compliance obligations without relying on Excel trackers and email follow-ups.
Overall, technology adoption in tax tends to lag behind finance, ERP, and FP&A in the workplace, but tools are evolving. AI and automation are becoming essential for efficiency, freeing professionals to focus on higher-value work while managing the growing complexity of tax compliance and reporting.
In terms of globalisation, being more integrated into the business, communication, relationship-building, the rise of tax tools and the influence of technology, how do you think the tax profession is going to change over the next decade? Can you see any major shifts coming?
I think tax will grow and evolve with AI, but AI certainly won’t replace tax professionals. Tax is becoming more strategic, and that will only continue. There will be a much bigger focus on strategic, big-picture thinking and on the value-add role of the tax professional.
That said, compliance is still core to what we do. Everything strategic ultimately shows up in the tax returns and related filings. But I do think it will get easier with AI and better tools, particularly in areas like data entry, compliance testing and document review. We’ll still need to be comfortable overseeing it and taking responsibility for it, but the aim will be to free up time to dedicate to value-adding and advisory work.
Looking more broadly, with globalisation and new tax legislation like BEPS and Pillar Two, is there anything in the global tax environment, or in Ireland specifically, that could improve the way tax works or make compliance easier?
This is my first truly global role. Previously, I worked mainly with Ireland and the UK, but following a merger, the business is now active in 28 countries across Europea and North America. From that perspective, the Irish tax system is very strong. Compared to Canada and the US, where filing processes are extremely complex, including faxed forms in the US and cheque refunds in Canada, Ireland’s system is detailed but efficient. Compliance works and isn’t unnecessarily complicated.
Even more broadly, countries like Germany can be very rigid, focusing strictly on the law with little room for practical solutions. In contrast, Ireland, the UK, and the Netherlands often emphasise practical implementation and interpretation. Ireland’s position in the global tax conversation is significant, partly because of FDI, our corporate tax rate, and high-profile cases like the Apple case. It makes the system more visible and globally influential.
One of my biggest surprises has been how efficient the Irish system is compared to other jurisdictions. While there’s always room for improvement, in terms of practical compliance and accessibility, Ireland is ahead of many countries, and its system works well for businesses navigating both domestic and international tax obligations.
What advice would you give to someone starting their career in tax?
Even five years in, I still feel like a newbie with so much to learn. My main advice is not to be afraid to take the alternative route. The majority of commerce students specialising in accounting go into the Big 4, and that’s fine, but if a different path feels right, pursue it.
Be willing to work hard and learn. Much of my work is on non-Irish tax: US and Canadian tax, transfer pricing and debt financing, all areas I didn’t study in depth, yet I use them daily. Being open to learning and taking advice from managers, peers, and colleagues is essential.
Having mentors and career support is invaluable. I reached out to Aoibhín in Barden after hearing her speak at a panel because in-house training isn’t the norm, and I wanted guidance on hire-ability and navigating the job market. That support was hugely helpful, and I still keep in touch with her to stay informed and get advice.
If you want to have a 1:1 confidential conversation about your tax or treasury career, contact Aoibhín Byrne (Leinster) at aoibhin.byrne@stg.barden.ie, Kate Flanagan (Ireland) at kate.flanagan@stg.barden.ie, or Aideen Murphy (Munster) at aideen.murphy@stg.barden.ie.