Seasonal boost and slower inflation lift Irish consumer sentiment in January

Posted on: 27 Jan 2026

• Consumer confidence hits nine month high-a temporary rise?

• Seasonal switch-off from economic news boosts January reading

• Easing inflation and talk of grocery price wars also supportive

• January sentiment gains also seen in US, UK and Euro area.

• Special question focusses on gender, age and financial circumstances-based differences in Irish consumer sentiment

  • Sentiment of Irish female consumers is weaker and falls further over past twelve months than that of males

  • Sentiment among over 45’s weakens more than among younger consumers on worries about economy
    Sentiment declines similar among the comfortable and those struggling but causes differ   

Speaking on the release of the January 2026 data and analysis, David Malone, CEO of the Irish League of Credit Unions noted; "While the improvement in Irish consumer sentiment in January may be modest and potentially temporary, it is nonetheless encouraging. In particular, the uptick in consumers’ assessments of their own personal financial circumstances is notable. However, it remains unclear whether this reflects short-term New Year optimism or the beginning of a more sustained improvement".

Summary

​As is usually the case, Irish consumer sentiment edged higher in January. Our sense is that this largely reflects a seasonal switch-off from economic and financial news over the Christmas and new year period, coupled with some new year optimism that the turbulence of the past twelve months may not be repeated in 2026.

However, if history is any guide, the February sentiment reading tends to signal a renewed focus on challenges for household finances and the broader economic environment. Frequently, this leads to a correction that brings the index lower.
The monthly uptick in consumer sentiment was broadly based but owed much to an improvement in Irish consumers assessment of their personal financial circumstances.
Irish consumers may be detecting at least tentative signs of a slowdown in living cost inflation of late.  The still downbeat tone of sentiment suggests consumers view this as some degree of easing in current pressures rather than signalling any clear gains in household spending power. The current survey reading is still at a relatively weak level historically, suggesting personal finances remain under strain for many households.
In the same vein, largely unchanged buying plans in January, point towards a cautious and concerned but not completely negative Irish consumer in early 2026.
 

Section I; January sentiment survey suggests Irish consumers start 2026 seeing their glass a little less empty than it was 

As the table below indicates, the Credit Union Consumer Sentiment Index (in partnership with  Core) shows an index reading of 64.7 for January 2026, a clear improvement on the 61.2 figure recorded in December 2025, but markedly lower than the January 2025 reading of 74.9.


 
 
Although there is no consistent seasonal pattern to the sentiment survey overall, there is a strong tendency for January readings to be clearly stronger than the preceding December figures (or the February data that follow). In the past 25 years, sentiment has only weakened twice between December and January, in 2021 on fears of a second Covid wave, and in 2009 when a crashing Irish economy prompted the prospect of severe austerity measures.
Our sense is that the ‘normal’ January uplift in Irish consumer sentiment owes much to a seasonal switch-off from economic and financial news over Christmas and new year holidays, coupled with an element of new year positivity.

On this basis, we would not suggest that the January 2026 reading points clearly towards improving sentiment through the year ahead. That said, against a backdrop of growing geopolitical uncertainty as the survey period progressed, we would draw some encouragement from an improvement that brought the Irish consumer sentiment index to its highest level in nine months-even if we think this gain might prove temporary or purely ‘seasonal’.

The modest monthly gain in January 2025 speaks of a nervous but not entirely negative Irish consumer. A comparison of the current reading of 64.7 with the 74.9 reported for January 2025 or the long-term survey average of 83.5 tends to emphasise the subdued nature of sentiment at present. If the usual tendency for February data to reverse at least part of January’s gains is repeated next month, that would suggest that nervousness continues to dominate the mood of Irish consumers.
January sentiment measures improve modestly elsewhere

January saw an improvement in sentiment metrics in the US, UK and Euro area as well as in Ireland, perhaps reflecting a shared seasonal uplift although current readings remain fairly weak by historical standards in all these regions.

In the US, a small increase was enough to push consumer sentiment to its best level since September. However, the report’s authors point towards continuing concerns around high prices and a softening jobs market among Americans this month.

In the Euro area, easing inflation, a softening in energy prices and slightly better than expected activity measures may have supported consumer confidence although the current reading remains well below its long-term average.

UK consumer confidence also edged higher in January, and a one-point gain was sufficient to register the strongest reading since August 2024. A further Bank of England rate cut in December may have boosted thinking on household finances but views on the economy deteriorated further. The report authors emphasised the continuing low level of confidence among UK consumers, noting that the January reading marks ten years that their sentiment measure has been in negative territory.     

Irish consumer sentiment improves but remains subdued in January
All five elements of the January reading of the Credit Union Consumer Sentiment Survey (in partnership with Core Research) showed some degree of improvement compared to their December levels while all were weaker than the levels posted for January 2025.

It should also be noted that there continue to be more negative than positive responses to all five elements of the survey. This means that on balance Irish consumers think their economic and financial circumstances are weakening rather than strengthening.

It should be noted that the bulk of survey responses were submitted before threats by US president Trump to take control of Greenland flared up into a major international issue. It might also be noted that President Trump's threats of sharply increased tariffs on a number of countries did not extend to Ireland and, finally, it could be argued that for many Irish consumers, peak Trump trauma may have has passed at least for the moment. 

The January survey data show consumers were a little less negative about the twelve-month outlook for the Irish economy than in December. In part, this likely reflects reduced media coverage and consumer focus on economic and financial matters over the holiday period.
It may also owe something to the resilience of the Irish economy through a very threatening year in 2025, coupled with less threatening forecasts for 2026. Finally, strong exchequer end-year returns point to continuing strength in the public finances.

However, consumers sense of the challenges facing the Irish economy is clearly evident in the fractional gain seen in this element of the survey between December and January, the sharp decline seen through the past twelve months and the comparatively depressed level of this element of the survey at present. 

The jobs element of the January sentiment survey reversed about half of the decline seen in December. This again may be at least partly ‘seasonal’ and could be boosted by traditional talk of job change over new year. However, this was offset by ongoing commentary around a cooling of the jobs market and risks around the multinational sector.

Again we would emphasise the January reading represents a substantial weakening compared to that at the start of 2025 and, accordingly, reflects the continuation of a strongly negative view of the outlook for jobs through the past year.

The largest changes in the survey between December and January were in those elements of the survey focussed on household finances. We would again expect some part of this to be ‘seasonal’ and therefore temporary, which could be reversed when end-year credit card and heating bills arrive in coming weeks.
That said, there may also be at least a tentative easing in the intensity of negativity around living costs on foot of a marked slowdown in food price inflation, continuing reports of fledgling grocery ‘price wars’ and a softer trend in energy costs of late.
Official data for December show food price inflation easing for the fourth month in a row to a still lofty 4.3%. However, food prices flatlined in both November and December, meaning the annualised rate over the last three months of 2025 was just 1.1% suggesting a notably less threatening trend in grocery bills of late. In the same vein, AA survey and EU data suggest oil prices were slightly lower in January than in December.
Whether this apparent easing in cost-of-living concerns continues in coming months is unclear. Much will depend on any future price ‘shocks’ as well as the vagaries of the Irish weather that will play a key role in determining the size of heating bills. In the absence of energy credits or adjustments to tax bands, the likelihood is that pressure on family finances will remain an important issue for 2026.

A sense that Irish consumers are acutely aware of continuing difficulties in making ends meet is suggested by the effectively unchanged assessment of the buying climate in the January survey that lagged improvements in other areas.
If the January sentiment survey hints at a limited and possibly temporary easing in ‘feel-bad’, it continues to highlight the absence of any clear ‘feel-good factor’ among Irish consumers at present.  

Section II; Shared or separate economies?

Do differences in gender, age and earning power affect the way Irish consumers think about how the economy and their financial circumstances have evolved in recent years?

Each month, the Credit Union Consumer Sentiment Survey (in partnership with Core Research) includes a couple of supplementary questions on topics of current interest. For January 2026, we repeated an exercise assessing the degree to which measures of sentiment vary according to demographic characteristics.
To do this, we compiled separate sentiment readings based on gender, age and ease of making ends meet for January 2026, January 2025 January 2024 and January 2020. We examine the trend in sentiment across the various demographic groupings over these time periods in the paragraphs below (we opted not to use January 2021 data in our comparison because of the particularly negative impact Covid had on that reading).

2025 worried Irish female consumers more than males
The first demographic split we examined was between male and female respondents to the survey. The results are shown in table 2a below.



The table shows that sentiment among male respondents is substantially stronger than among females in each of the past three January readings but sentiment was almost identical in 2020.
First, it should be noted that it is frequently the case that reported sentiment readings are higher for males than females. A 2019 study using Irish consumer sentiment survey data found that males reported stronger sentiment scores than females in 61 out of 65 readings for the period 2003 to 2019 (Do men and women see the Irish economy differently? | LinkedIn). 

These results correspond with findings from a range of international studies, and we repeat a conclusion drawn from one study using US consumer sentiment data ‘that men tend to be significantly more optimistic than women regarding a broad range of issues, including the economy and financial markets’ (Gender differences in optimism and asset allocation’, Jacobson et al, 2014). 

In assessing differences in Irish consumer sentiment between males and females, we would emphasise the role of a clear gender income gap. However, the Central Statistics Office’s Survey on Income and Living Conditions 2024 notes a narrowing of that gap in recent years, likely reflecting notably increased fiscal supports in recent Budgets (prior to Budget 2026). These developments would appear consistent with the relative improvement in Irish consumer sentiment among females between 2024 and 2025 but is at odds with the widening gap evident in the past twelve months. Irish consumer sentiment weakened substantially more among females than among males between January 2025 and January 2026.

The sharper drop in Irish consumer sentiment among females in the past twelve months was particularly evident in thinking on the outlook for jobs. From a slightly more positive view of the Irish jobs market in the January 2025 sentiment survey, female views have fallen further than those of males through the past year.

This shift would appear to chime with the evidence from official jobs data which show the rate of jobs growth among females materially outpacing that of males in 2023 and 2024 but dropping more sharply through 2025 to a slower pace in the most recent data available which relate to the third quarter.

In this respect, the observed gender differences in the sentiment survey readings over the past twelve months may be reflecting a cooling of labour market conditions that may be felt more acutely of late by females because of variations in sectoral conditions or in the demand for part-time staff. In this context, official data show an increase in average hours worked by males between Q3 2024 and Q3 2025 while there was a drop in average hours worked by females over the same period.     

Likely related to the experience of the jobs market but perhaps also reflecting a more intrinsic caution, female consumers thinking on the broader Irish economic outlook also deteriorated faster than that of males in the past twelve months.

There is a widely held view that female thinking on the outlook for consumer prices is shaped by trends in grocery prices than is the case for males, though this has been challenged by recent work (Beyond Groceries: Forecast Confidence and the Gender Gap in Inflation Expectations - Poster, Reiche 2025) that emphasises low financial confidence in this context.

While Irish female consumers are more negative than males in regard to trends in their household finances over the past twelve months, the gap between males and females didn’t change materially between January 2025 and January 2026. However, female consumers are more negative and have become more pessimistic about the outlook for household finances in the year ahead, a development that could reflect the failure to continue temporary cost-of living support measures in the most recent Budget. Possibly as a result, female consumers are both more negative than males and have also become more pessimistic in relation to making major purchases in the past twelve months. 

No country for old men (or women)?
With much commentary in recent years suggesting there are major generational divides in the economic and financial circumstances of consumers, the January sentiment survey also separated responses to the consumer sentiment survey from those aged over 45 and those aged under 45. The results, with corresponding data for January 2024 and for January 2020, are shown in table 2b below.


 
As the table above indicates, in Ireland, consumer sentiment continues to be consistently higher among those aged under 45 than among those aged over 45. This age-focussed gap is also larger than the gender gap discussed above.

While this result may be at odds with many prevalent narratives, it likely owes something to the nature of the sentiment study that focusses on perceived changes in economic and financial conditions for Irish consumers rather than either their current level of income that might tend to peak around middle-age and decline subsequently or their stock of wealth that would usually tend to increase with age but may be concentrated in their housing. It might also be noted that older consumers may have less time to rebuild financial capacity in the event of a marked downturn.

Moreover, our findings accord with the results of many other studies including a recent Eurofound study(Uneven picture of a changing Europe: Findings from Living and Working in the EU e-survey 2025 | Eurofound) that noted ‘Economic strain has increased across all age groups in the past five years, with the highest levels found among middle-aged respondents.’

Although sentiment among older Irish consumers has consistently been lower than among their younger counterparts, we previously noted in our analysis of the January 2025 survey that there had been a sharper deterioration in sentiment on the part of younger Irish consumers between 2020 and 2025.
As table 2b illustrates, the past year has seen a sharper deterioration in sentiment among older consumers that now means the weakening in sentiment between January 2020 and January 2026 is similar for both older and younger consumers. 
In the 2025 data, views on the outlook for the economy and jobs were quite similar across age groups but older consumers were notably more pessimistic in relation to their household finances, presumably reflecting concerns about the impact of inflation on those older consumers with relatively fixed incomes.

Over the past twelve months, sentiment among older consumers on the outlook for household finances and the buying climate for major purchases has weakened more than has been the case for younger consumers.

However, the sharper drop in consumer sentiment in the past twelve months among older consumers owes more to a larger deterioration in thinking in relation to the general economic outlook and job prospects than seen among those aged under 45. As recent data show a faster pace of jobs growth among older age groups, the greater pessimism on the economy may reflect greater concern about the potential negative impact of the continuing shift in US policymaking.

We might speculate such concerns could be informed by a sense of the problems seen in the Irish economy’s pre-multinational phase as well as a more acute nervousness informed by the scale of fallout caused by the financial crash. So, the weakening in sentiment among older consumers may reflect a greater propensity for fear in the face of a more threatening geopolitical landscape.        
   
An equal opportunities downturn?
The January survey also repeated a comparison of sentiment trends between those indicating difficulty making ends meet and those reporting that they could make ends meet with ease. The results of the January 2026 survey and those of previous years are presented in table 2c below.



As might be expected, and as has been the case in previous years, sentiment about economic and financial conditions is markedly lower among those facing difficulty making ends meet than among those making ends meet with ease.

This financial means-based gap is about twice as large as the gender-based gap discussed above. While social fracture in Ireland is far less pervasive than in many other countries, a divide of this scale suggests widely varying experiences of Irish economic and financial conditions across Irish households at present.
What is notable about the 2026 survey is that while both trends are fairly similar of late, sentiment has weakened slightly more in the past twelve months among those making ends meet with ease than among those with difficulties in this regard.

The decline in sentiment in these two groups through the past twelve months encompassed a different ordering of concerns. While the drop in sentiment among those making ends meet with ease reflected a sharply negative re-assessment of the outlook for jobs, the weakening in sentiment among those with difficulty making ends meet was significantly driven by a comparatively large deterioration in their assessment of their household finances.

So, while the risk to jobs weighed on the mood of more comfortable Irish consumers, the reality of rising living costs hit those struggling hardest through the past twelve months.
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 January 7^th and 20^th 2026.