Anyone looking for reasons to be cheerful might do well to avoid conversations with people close to home in the days ahead, with a new study suggesting Ireland is one of the gloomiest places on Earth.
The survey of 60 countries, conducted by Red C and Gallup International, suggests that when asked about the world’s prospects for 2026 when compared with 2025, Ireland consistently features among the 10 most pessimistic countries.
Across three questions covering hope, economic prosperity and peace, Ireland underperformed the global average, with the results “pointing to a consistent pattern of lower confidence and more cautious sentiment in Ireland compared with respondents worldwide,” the research suggests.
It found that just 20 per cent of those polled in Ireland were hopeful that the year ahead would be better than the one just past, while 38 per cent said things would mostly likely be worse.
By contrast about 40 per cent of people in the UK and the United States said 2026 would be better than 2025.
One in four globally told researchers that they expected economic prosperity in 2026 but when Irish people were asked the same question just under 10 per cent were upbeat about their finances over the course of the next 12 months.
A total of 48 per cent of people here said the year ahead would bring economic difficulty, considerably higher than the global average.
Globally, 40 per cent of respondents said they expected the world to become more troubled in 2026, while 26 per cent were of the view it would be more peaceful. A further 28 per cent told researchers they expected no major change.
In Ireland, 54 per cent said the world would be less peaceful in 2026, while just one in 10 said they believed things would be better over the next 12 months.
Looking across hope, economic expectations and views on global peace, countries tended to “cluster into distinct global mood groups,” the researchers said.
Only a small group of countries show consistent optimism across all three dimensions, including Saudi Arabia, Kenya, South Africa, Colombia, Pakistan and Moldova – countries largely located in the global south.
A much larger group is hopeful about the future but anxious about the economy and/or global stability, including India, Argentina, Mexico, Peru, Malaysia, the Philippines, Japan, South Korea and the US.
At the other end of the spectrum, a broad group of countries – predominantly in western and eastern Europe – are pessimistic across all three indicators, including Ireland, Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria, Greece, Poland, Romania and Bulgaria.
As part of the research pollsters interviewed 59,636 adults aged 18 and older across 60 countries worldwide, with Red C interviewing a random sample of 1,006 adults aged 18 and older online between December 10th and 16th.