Irish households saved an estimated €24 billion in 2025, according to new provisional figures from the Central Statistics Office (CSO), or an average of €2 billion per month.
Overall, household total disposable income was at €185 billion, while consumer spending was €161 billion, leaving gross household savings of €24 billion, largely unchanged from 2024.
As a result, the household saving rate was provisionally estimated at 13 per cent in 2025, down from 13.3 per cent in 2024.
The CSO said the seasonally adjusted savings rate in the fourth quarter of last year was provisionally estimated at 10.9 per cent. This was the lowest rate in more than a decade, since a 10.7 per cent saving rate was recorded in the first quarter of 2016.
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“The saving rate tends to be lower in the fourth quarter due to additional household spending at Christmas,” the CSO said. “Disposable income in this sector is also affected by tax payments for the self-employed, generally being paid in the fourth quarter.
Late last month, Minister for Finance Simon Harris unveiled details of a plan to encourage households to invest more of their savings, with money put into a special savings scheme set to attract a lower flat rate of tax – and avoiding taxation on capital gains.
The proposal, which is expected to be unveiled in Budget 2027, is likely to be styled on a Swedish model, where the rate of tax is linked to the market rate – or yield – that applies to the Government’s benchmark bonds. The Swedish tax rate is currently 1.065 per cent.
Meanwhile, the CSO said that Irish gross domestic product (GDP) - the total value of all goods and services produced within the economy - rose by an estimated 13.5 per cent to €639 billion.
However, it said that more than €200 billion of this value added in 2025 flowed out of the domestic economy to corporations’ owners abroad as profits and dividends
