Ireland

Country at a glance

Ireland is a western europe member of the European Union, with its capital in Dublin. The country joined the European Communities in 1973 in the first enlargement (alongside Denmark and Ireland from 1973, plus the United Kingdom which left in 2020). Economically, Ireland is an open Atlantic-rim economy with a foreign-direct-investment-driven tech and pharmaceutical sector — Apple, Pfizer, Google EMEA — and a GDP-per-capita figure inflated by multinational accounting. The country has used the euro since 1999, and it remains outside the Schengen common travel area. The official languages are Irish, English. On Eurostat's headline indicators, Ireland is currently 18th-most populous of the 27 member states with data on record; 8th by GDP at current prices; with one of the youngest median ages in the bloc (rank 27/27).

Key insights

How Ireland stands out across the EU-27 on flagship indicators — auto-generated from the latest Eurostat snapshot.

• 🟡16.1% of energy from renewables — bottom 3 in EU
• 🟢GDP per capita €117k — top 2 in EU (EU avg €42k)
• 🟢Tertiary attainment 58.7% (25-64) — top 1 in EU
• 🔵1st-youngest median age in EU-27 (39.6 years)

Ireland vs EU-27

Flagship indicators alongside the EU-27 average and Ireland's rank across covered member states.

Indicators by topic

Every Eurostat indicator we hold for Ireland, grouped by theme. Click through to the indicator profile for the cross-country timeline.

More data on Ireland

This profile covers Eurostat statistical indicators. The pages below extend the picture into other strands of EU public data — parliamentary representation, public procurement, EU-funded research, cohesion-fund spending, regional statistics.

• European Parliament

  MEPs elected from Ireland (current term, 2024–2029).

• Public tenders

  TED notices from Ireland buyers — public contracts above EU thresholds.

• EU research grants

  CORDIS-funded R&D projects coordinated from Ireland.

• Cohesion funds

  Kohesio-listed ERDF/ESF+/Cohesion Fund projects in Ireland.

Sources & methodology

Data on this page comes from Eurostat (404 indicators), fetched from the official dissemination API. Each indicator card links to the cross-country profile with the full year-by-year timeline. See methodology for caveats, revision policy and ranking definitions, or sources for the complete dataset list.

Last refreshed: 2026-05-18 · Source: Eurostat dissemination API