Irish Software Deserves Better

First published on archaic.ie on 31 March 2026, in the studio’s voice. Reworked here in mine.

Try to do anything online in Ireland. Anything at all.

Try to pay your credit union. Try to book a GAA pitch. Try to find out what your local council actually does. Try to get through a government service without opening three tabs and a PDF.

It’s shambolic.

The banks are still running interfaces from 2011. The FAI website looks like it was built by someone who lost interest halfway through. Council services sit behind menus that seem designed to stop you finding them. Gyms charge sixty euro a month and can’t send a working email.

Everything is a list. Everything costs too much. Nothing solves the problem you turned up with.

This isn’t a technology problem. Ireland has developers. Ireland has talent. The problem is who gets to build these systems: either a large consultancy billing by the day with no incentive to finish, or the cheapest bidder, delivering exactly what you’d expect for the price.

Neither is building for the person who has to use the thing.

Is AI slop the answer? No. Replacing bad software with auto-generated bad software isn’t progress. But AI is a tool, and used properly it lets one person build what used to take a department. You can move fast without cutting corners. You can afford to care about the details, because you finally have the time to.

That’s the bet I’ve made with Archaic, my studio. It isn’t a consultancy. It doesn’t bill by the day. It builds things that work for the people who have to use them, and I publish what didn’t work alongside what did.

Ireland deserves software that respects your time. Software that loads fast, does what you came for, and gets out of the way. Software that doesn’t feel like a chore.

The bar is on the floor. I intend to clear it.