Irish consumer sentiment steady but still subdued in December

Posted on: 09 Jan 2026

• Risks to economy and rising living costs continue to weigh on sentiment

• Irish consumers less concerned than their US counterparts but more nervous than those in Euro area or UK as 2025 ended

• Special questions ask what Irish consumers saw as encouraging or disappointing in economic and financial developments in 2025 

  • Survey suggests consumers see disconnect between Ireland's strong growth performance and lack of progress on broader economic goals in 2025

  • Consumer thinking split on Ireland’s economic performance in 2025 with 34% saying it was encouraging and 25% saying it was disappointing

  • 72% of consumers see progress on containing the cost of living as disappointing, 12% view it as encouraging

  • 71% see progress on housing as disappointing while 15% regard it as encouraging.

Speaking on the release of the December data and analysis, David Malone, CEO of the Irish League of Credit Unions noted; "The subdued December sentiment survey suggests that Irish consumers feel a difficult year is ending with continuing economic and financial challenges at home and abroad. Irish consumers can rely on their local credit union for guidance and support to help them build a better financial future in 2026 and beyond.

Summary

Irish consumer sentiment held steady at a fairly subdued level in December. A small and perhaps surprising easing in cost-of-living concerns coupled with continued encouraging news on Irish economic growth offset some increased negativity around the jobs market.

While there was no significant monthly change in consumer sentiment, the December 2025 reading was markedly lower than that recorded twelve months earlier. The past year has seen a broadly based downgrade of Irish consumer thinking in relation to economic conditions and their own financial circumstances.
The coincidence of a notably riskier economic environment and the reality of continued increases in the cost-of-living almost inevitably prompted a marked drop in Irish consumer confidence over the past twelve months. 

Section I; December sentiment survey suggests 2025 was a year most Irish consumers want to forget 

As the table below indicates, the Credit Union Consumer Sentiment Survey (in partnership with Core Research) shows an index reading of 61.2 in December, effectively unchanged from the 61.0 figure reported for November but markedly lower than the December 2024 reading of 73.9.



The December sentiment reading of 61.2 is only slightly below the average 2025 survey value of 63.6, but some considerable distance below the near 30-year survey average of 83.6. This suggests that 2025 has been a worrisome year for Irish consumers and those worries, for a range of reasons, continue to weigh on sentiment.

Contrasting confidence trends across countries in 2025 

December saw a small monthly rise in consumer sentiment in the US, a small monthly fall in the Euro area and a clear improvement in UK consumer confidence that continues a pattern of very volatile monthly changes in the mood of British consumers.

Compared to December 2024, the mood of the consumer is sharply down in the US and also markedly weaker in Ireland whereas it has not materially changed in either the Euro area or in the UK (in spite of large but ultimately offsetting monthly movements), as the graph below illustrates.

The relative performance of these consumer sentiment metrics is not altogether surprising in that the US experienced the largest change in its economic ‘settings’ reflecting various policy changes enacted by the new administration in Washington.  Given the importance of the US to the Irish economy, it might also be expected that trade concerns would weigh heavily on the thinking of Irish consumers.

The diagram below shows a marked worsening in consumer confidence in all four series in the wake of the ‘Liberation Day’ tariff announcements on the White House lawn on April 2^nd.  However, the mood of UK and Euro area consumers improved as the year progressed and the intensity of the tariff threat was seen to ease.



In contrast, US and Irish consumers remained nervous and negative. In part, this may reflect continuing risks around the mercurial nature of US policymaking. It may also be the case that cost-of-living concerns remain more elevated and more central to consumer thinking in the US and Ireland than in the Euro area or the UK.

In the US, 'affordability' concerns have increased through 2025 in spite of a reported easing in inflation in official data from 3.3% in November 2024 to the latest figure of 2.7% in November 2025 (although various statistical issues have led some to question recent data).

In contrast to the trend in the US, UK or the Euro area, Ireland saw a marked pick-up in inflation in the past twelve months (from 1.0% in November 2024 to 3.2% in November 2025).

Irish consumers concerned and cautious in December 

The details of the December reading of the Credit Union Consumer Sentiment Survey (in partnership with Core Research) were mixed, with three of the main elements showing monthly gains and two showing monthly declines.

None of the changes appear to signal dramatic changes in thinking between November and December. As noted previously, all of the five main elements of the consumer sentiment survey were markedly weaker in December 2025 than twelve months earlier.

Economic growth is still soaring, but the jobs market is slowing  

Irish consumers remain overwhelmingly negative on the twelve-month outlook for the Irish economy, but the degree of concern has eased slightly in recent months and this continued in the December survey.
Encouraging Irish economic growth data for the third quarter and Exchequer returns for the first eleven months released at the start of the survey period, coupled with relatively positive commentaries from the Central Bank and Economic and Social Research Institute at the end of the survey period, likely contributed to a view that a frequently threatened sharp slowdown was, at very least, far from imminent.   

In contrast to thinking on the general economic outlook, sentiment on jobs prospects weakened in December. Official data showed a marked slowdown in job creation in the third quarter. In addition, while unemployment eased to 4.9% in November from 5.0% in October, it was still notably higher than the 4.2% rate recorded in November 2025. Finally, the December survey period saw continuing warnings about job losses in the Tech sector in Ireland.

Slower food price inflation makes Irish consumers slightly less negative about living costs?

The December sentiment survey saw a clear if modest improvement from the November reading in Irish consumers assessment as to how their household finances had evolved over the past twelve months. Again, it should be emphasised that Irish consumers remain very negative overall in relation to their personal financial circumstances, but the December survey suggests they are not quite as pessimistic as they were a month ago.

In circumstances where official inflation data released during the survey period showed a further pick-up (from 3.0% in October to 3.2% in November), this result may appear slightly surprising. However, consumers may have sensed some pull-back in the pace of increase in living costs of late, in line with the slowing in official inflation data released in early January after the survey closed.

Alternatively, this result might be no more than statistical ‘noise’ or a seasonal inclination towards positivity. In either of these cases, it would likely reverse in early 2026.

It could also be that a modest easing in grocery price inflation of late coupled with high-profile media reports of price discounting of some staples may be influencing consumer thinking at the margin, particularly as concerns around accelerating food prices have been central to consumer worries in regard to living costs through 2025.

Consumer thinking on the outlook for household finances also improved in December, but this change was much more limited. Again, we think the recent and predicted slowing in grocery price inflation may be influential in this regard.

That said, sentiment in relation to the prospects for household finances through the coming year remains strongly and not surprisingly negative. In this context, the ESRI commentary released towards the end of the survey period indicated that compared to a policy indexed on wage growth, the recent Budget would leave the average Irish household 1.5% worse off in 2026.

In these circumstances, it is not entirely surprising that many consumers, having previously prepared for their extra Christmas outlays, indicated some pull-back in spending plans in the December survey.     

Section II; What was better and what was worse in 2025?

As usual, the Credit Union Consumer Sentiment Survey (in partnership with Core Research) included a supplementary question on topics of current interest.
Alongside the regular questions in the December survey, we asked consumers whether they felt various aspects of Ireland’s economic and financial performance in 2025 had been encouraging or disappointing.

The wording of the question was intended to allow consumers to judge outcomes in the light of various developments and constraints affecting the Irish economy and its policymakers.

We have broken the responses into two diagrams. The first diagram below is focussed on various ‘narrow’ measures of macro growth performance, the second considers how consumers see progress or otherwise on a range of other broader socioeconomic issues.


On balance, Irish consumers see the performance of the economy in 2025 as broadly in line with expectations, but this is because large and effectively equal numbers of consumers see the performance of the Irish economy as either encouraging (35%) or disappointing (36%).

So, in what was a year of threats and troubles, it may not be too surprising that only one in four Irish consumers feel the Irish economy developed as they had expected.
At the more extreme ends of these groupings, slightly more consumers (16%) see Ireland’s 2025 growth performance as very disappointing as see it as very encouraging (10%).
Looking at the demographic make-up of these two ends of the spectrum, females were twice as likely as males to view Ireland’s growth performance in 2025 as very disappointing while males were twice as likely as females to see it as very encouraging.
Those making ends meet with difficulty were three times more likely to regard Ireland’s 2025 growth as very disappointing as those making ends meet with ease, while these ratios were reversed in relation to those seeing growth as very encouraging.   

We also thought it might be worthwhile to ask if consumers saw any notable differences in the performance of the multinational and the domestic sectors. However, as the diagram above illustrates, on balance, consumers judged the 2025 performance of both the multinational and domestic sectors favourably, with slightly more than one in three consumers judging each of them to have performed encouragingly in 2025.
Although slightly more consumers thought domestic businesses performance was disappointing (26%) than thought multinational performance was disappointing (21%), these results suggest that consumers felt 2025 was a reasonably good year for business overall. 

With consumers viewing the performance of both multinational and domestic businesses more favourably than the overall growth performance, this might suggest disappointment at the performance of the public sector and/or the jobs dividend from growth.

As the diagram illustrates, consumers viewed the jobs performance of the Irish economy in 2025 in very similar terms to the overall growth performance. In terms of ‘extreme’ views, females were far more likely to view the jobs market as very disappointing and far less likely to see it as very encouraging than males.
Those struggling to make ends meet were three times more likely to view the jobs market in 2025 as very disappointing than those making ends meet with ease while ratios were again reversed in the case of those judging the jobs market as very encouraging. In the same vein, positive views tended to correlate with higher incomes. Perhaps ominously, younger consumers tended to be more negative in their assessment of the jobs market than older consumers.

While not as starkly divergent as recent US developments that have re-focussed attention on the so-called k-shaped economy, these results hint that Irish consumers sense diverging ‘dividends’ from economic growth across the spectrum of Irish consumers.

In this respect, the survey results seem consistent with the message from  income tax returns that showed a 4.1% rise in the first 10 months of 2025 whereas the month of November alone, heavily influenced by returns from non-PAYE employment, showed an increase of 7.7%. In the same vein, new car sales for 2025 show a 9% rise in luxury marques (BMW, Lexus, Mercedes Benz and Porsche and a 2.5% increase in other makes.

It's not just economic growth, stupid! 

While a much-quoted phrase from Bill Clinton’s 1992 election campaign emphasises the role of economic issues in voters’ minds, sometimes, in technical discussions of Irish economic performance, the focus is excessively on aggregate growth outcomes. However, strong growth doesn’t automatically filter through into the experience of the average Irish consumer.
In this context, I estimate that the cumulative increase in ‘real’ or inflation-adjusted Irish GDP between the pre-Covid year of 2019 and 2025 is a remarkable 55%. Even excluding the exceptional influence of the multinational sector, the cumulative rise in GNI* is around 33%.

However, the rise in aggregate household income over this period was a somewhat smaller 19%. When account is taken of the rise in population, the increase per person drops to a cumulative 10%. When we allow for a faster rise in the number of households than in the overall population (remembering that even smaller size households have a significant element of fixed costs), the cumulative increase in income per household through this period of buoyant ‘macro’ advance becomes marginal.   

Quite apart from the increase in Ireland's economic and financial resources is the question of whether those resources have been put to best use. 

The December 2025 Credit Union Consumer Sentiment Survey (in partnership with Core Research) also asked consumers to judge whether they felt 2025 outcomes were encouraging or disappointing in relation to a range of other Irish socio-economic developments. Their responses are shown in the diagram below. 


Compared to their generally positive or balanced assessment of Irish economic growth, Irish consumers were notably more negative in their judgement on the performance of the Irish economy in 2025 under a range of other headings.    

The most negative assessment in relation to 2025 outcomes was in regard to the cost-of-living, with 72% of consumers expressing disappointment and only 12% of consumers saying they felt progress in limiting increases in living costs was encouraging.

The intensity of consumer thinking on this topic is suggested by the fact that one in two Irish consumers view progress in containing living costs in 2025 as ‘very’ disappointing while only one in twenty-five regarded it as ‘very’ encouraging.  

All demographic groups were substantially negative in the balance of their responses. This commonality of thinking could reflect the particular impact of a marked pick-up in food price inflation in 2025.
That said, negative views were more widely held by consumers outside Dublin, and by females than by males. Negative views on living costs tended to increase with age and were more pronounced among those facing difficulty making ends meet.  

Some marginal offset might be suggested by a slightly less negative balance in response to a separate question on progress in boosting household incomes but here again, the overall tone of responses is markedly negative.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the second area where 2025 progress was judged most negatively was housing, with 71% of Irish consumers regarding it as disappointing and just 15% judging it to be encouraging.

Again, the intensity of views is reflected in the fact that 53% of consumers saw 2025 progress as ‘very’ disappointing while just 5% saw it as ‘very’ encouraging. There was a broad consistency in responses on this topic across all demographic groups.

As responses to previous survey questions have emphasised the importance that Irish consumers place on healthcare, the strong negativity around performance and progress in this area in 2025 should be seen as disappointing in the context of substantially increased funding of healthcare in recent years.

Two in three Irish consumers (65%) judged progress in healthcare in 2025 to be disappointing with just one in six consumers (17%) seeing it as encouraging. Again, negative views dominated across demographic groupings, but they were more pronounced among females than males, among those struggling to make ends meet and also tended to increase with age.

All the other areas of socioeconomic importance also registered negative progress balances in 2025, but the degree of negativity was materially lower than in relation to the cost of living, housing or healthcare.

In very general terms, Irish consumers see 2025 broadly positively in terms of narrowly defined economic output but also view the year very unfavourably in terms of a range of socioeconomic outputs. This divergence in consumer thinking may, at least in part, reflect a judgement on the use of the plentiful economic resources at the Government’s disposal.

Seen in this light, the survey suggests that Irish consumers view the past year viewed as markedly disappointing in terms of the capacity of policymakers to deliver tangible improvements in outcomes in a range of areas vital to the sustainability of economic and social progress.

In this respect, the survey hints at a marked divergence in the pronouncements of economists in terms the performance of the Irish economy in 2025 and the thinking of consumers that tends to place a greater importance on the progress that performance might be expected to deliver.
   
 The Credit Union Irish Consumer Sentiment Survey is a monthly survey of a nationally representative sample of 1,000 adults. Since May 2019, Core Research have undertaken the survey administration and data collection for the Survey. This tranche of the survey was live between the 4^th and 20^th December 2025.