Irish people are paying for news more than ever before, as podcasts experienced a “surge in popularity” last year, according to the Digital News Report Ireland.
Interest in news increased in Ireland this year, with 56 per cent of people “extremely” or “very” interested in news, an increase of three percentage points from last year. It remains lower than the Covid pandemic peak of 70 per cent.
This rate of interest places Irish audiences far ahead of the UK at 39 per cent, and ahead of the European average at 45 per cent. US audiences stood at 51 per cent reporting that level of interest.
Rónán Ó Domhnaill, media development commissioner at Coimisiún na Meán said it is “encouraging to see that interest in news remains high in Ireland when compared internationally, even as the formats used to consume news continue to change.”
One in five people, 20 per cent, are now paying for news content - up from 7 per cent in 2015 and coming after a flatline in the years since the pandemic. This stands at twice the rate in the UK, and 5 per cent higher than the European average.
The most read newspapers were The Irish Times and the Irish Independent, though those publications recorded a decline in overall weekly online reach since 2015. The report noted that may be caused by “targeting a smaller (paying) audience and not trying to be all things to all people.”
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Consumption of podcasts in Ireland has risen to 12 per cent each week, higher than the figure for Europe at 9 per cent and the UK at 7 per cent. US audiences still lead the way at 15 per cent. Despite this, just 2 per cent use podcasts as their main source of news.
Of the 2,000-person sample for the report, 36 per cent had subscribed to the Irish Independent and 33 per cent had subscriptions to The Irish Times. The New York Times had increased its share from 9 per cent last year to 22 per cent in 2025, the Guardian similarly increased its market share from 10 per cent to 21 per cent in the same period, the Guardian relies on donations from readers rather than subscriptions.
“Without a sustainable business model - we can have all the reports, talk about nostalgia all we like - but journalism will not survive unless there is a model there to support it,” said Tom Felle, University of Galway associate professor of journalism, at the launch of the report.
Audience attitudes towards the use of artificial intelligence (AI) have changed in recent years. The share of respondents that were comfortable with AI-produced news grew from 15 per cent to 19 per cent, with under-35s nearly twice as comfortable with its use.
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Despite this, 45 per cent of people said AI would make news less trustworthy and 40 per cent thought it would make news coverage less accurate.
“I don’t see AI as a threat at all, I see a lot of potential for AI to work really well in terms of supporting how journalism is created,” Mr Felle said. “I think the public values trust in journalism and they are wary about what [ai generated content] might look like.”
The most trustworthy news sources this year were RTÉ News, at 72 per cent, local radio and local newspapers, at 72 and 71 per cent respectively, as well as The Irish Times and the BBC at 70 per cent.
Social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, was seen by the public as the biggest threat for false and misleading information at 54 per cent, alongside TikTok and Facebook at 53 per cent.
The report, which was published by Coimisiún na Meán, was undertaken by Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford with data from the DCU Institute for Future Media, Democracy and Society.
This story was updated on 17 June 2025 to correct Tom Felle’s affiliation to University of Galway
