Analysis: Data on Ireland’s financial literacy shows basic knowledge around money is strong, but the depth is not, especially amongst young adults and women
By Maire Ryan and Olive McCarthy, UCC
Have you ever wondered where your money goes at the end of the month, or how financially secure you might be 10 or 20 years from now? For something that shapes so much of daily life, money is something most of us are left to figure out on our own. In fact, the European Commission reports that only one in five people across the EU have a strong grasp of how money works.
Ireland is now in a better position than most countries to know what its own picture looks like. In 2023, the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (CCPC) ran the most comprehensive survey on the subject ever conducted here, gathering data from 1,505 adults using the OECD’s standardised questionnaire. The findings led to Ireland’s first National Financial Literacy Strategy on the subject in 2025 and a new wave of data collection is underway in 2026. What the data shows is more interesting than the usual story.
Bills
This is the part Ireland gets right. 96% of adults pay their bills on time. 83% of us have automatic payments set up for regular outgoings and 68% use a banking app to track what’s coming in and going out. Nearly eight in 10 could cover a sudden major expense without having to borrow. On the everyday business of running a household, Ireland performs well by international standards.
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Loans
This is where the picture changes. Less than half of us could correctly answer a basic question about compound interest (the mechanism that quietly turns a small balance into a much bigger one over time), be that on savings or credit. Only around 56% could correctly identify how inflation eats into the value of money sitting still. About one in three did not understand that spreading investments reduces risk. Half could not say whether a digital financial contract is binding without a paper signature.
These are not trivial questions. They decide whether a personal loan ends up costing what you thought it would, whether savings keep their value, and whether a pension actually grows. Bank of Ireland research in 2026 found that only 27% of Irish adults remember being taught about money in school or college.
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Pensions
While 71% of Irish adults hold a pension, which is high by international standards, around four in 10 are not confident about their retirement income, with women noticeably less confident than men (41% versus 35%). Ireland is also a cautious country when it comes to investing. Only one third of adults are willing to take any risk with their savings, and 40% explicitly say they are not.
This combination matters a great deal right now. The first contributions to the My Future Fund auto-enrolment scheme begin this year. New contributors are being placed into investment vehicles where the long-term performance depends on exactly the things many people say they don’t fully understand: compound returns and spreading risk across different assets.
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Pay packets
The most uncomfortable finding in the data has nothing to do with knowledge. About one in three Irish adults said they could not cover everyday costs at some point in the past year. Roughly one in five would last less than a month if they lost their main source of income and 15% feel they have too much debt. For this group, the issue is not about understanding; it is that they don’t have enough money in the first place.
Younger adults – not older ones – are the most financially exposed group on a measure that combines income shocks, having little or no savings to fall back on, having to borrow in a hurry to cover essentials, scam losses and retirement insecurity.
Financial scams
30% of adults queried an unrecognised transaction on their statement in the past two years. 11% had their card details used without permission while one in nine lost money to hackers or phishing. 6% of respondants say they gave personal financial information in response to a fraudulent message. Knowing more about money offers some protection against this, though the effect is modest. Income and job security matter more.
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What women know about money – and what they don’t
The most surprising finding in the data and the one that has had the least public attention relates to gender differences in personal finance. Women in the Irish survey are more likely than men to hold a third-level qualification (71% versus 56% at degree level or above), more likely to save and report similar levels of financial satisfaction and worry as men. Yet women score noticeably lower than men on the OECD knowledge test. While 71% of men reach the OECD’s minimum target, the figure for women is 56%.
The gap shows up in four specific topics: simple interest, compound interest, inflation and the idea that spreading money across different investments lowers risk. These are exactly the things that decide whether long-term savings, pensions and investments actually grow. The gap holds up no matter how the data are sliced. Women score lower than men even when everything else about them is the same.
There is also a gap between older and younger women. Women aged 75 and over score much further behind men of the same age than younger women do. You might expect younger Irish women, with more formal education and full digital access, to be closing this gap but the data so far does not show this. The gap is present at every age although it is widest among older women.
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What happens next
Ireland’s National Financial Literacy Strategy now sits with a governance structure shared by the Department of Finance, the CCPC, and the Central Bank. Working groups are in place and many new practical initiatives are emerging, including work at Cork University Business School to improve the financial knowledge of students at a time when they are likely making their first independent decisions about money.
The data give Ireland a clearer picture than most countries have. The basics are strong, but the depth is not. Younger adults are more financially exposed than older ones. Women carry a real and persistent gap in the concepts that decide what money does over time. The next wave of data, due from 2026, will show whether the picture is moving.
This analysis draws on data from the 2023 CCPC Financial Literacy Survey, conducted by Ipsos Ireland on behalf of the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission using the OECD International Network on Financial Education (INFE) standardised questionnaire. The data were accessed through the OECD.
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Dr Marie Ryan is an Economics Lecturer in the Cork University Business School at UCC. Prof Olive McCarthy is a professor in the Department of Food Business and Development and a senior researcher with the Centre for Co-operative Studies at the Cork University Business School at UCC. She is a former Research Ireland awardee.
The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ