After three decades of measuring how Ireland adopts technology, Ipsos B&A finds the question has fundamentally changed. The devices are everywhere. What can no longer be assumed is trust.
For the best part of three decades, we have watched Irish homes fill up with technology. We remember when a mobile phone was a status symbol, when broadband was a luxury, and when “going online” was a deliberate act performed at a desk for a fixed period. That world is gone. The smartphone now sits in nine out of every ten pockets, and the question that animated the industry for twenty years — will people adopt this? — has been answered emphatically. Yes, they have.
The latest TechScape 2026 study from Ipsos B&A, was conducted face-to-face, in-home among a nationally representative sample of 1,002 adults aged 16 and over. It confirms what many have sensed, but few have measured: Ireland has reached (virtual) tech saturation. This single fact changes almost everything about what comes next.
We see five emerging themes in this year’s Ipsos B&A Techscape 2026 report:
- The Hardware Era is Over
- A Two-Speed Ireland
- The Trust Deficit
- The AI Paradox
- The Attention Reckoning
1. The Hardware Era is Over
Smartphone ownership now stands at 92% of adults, or roughly four million people, compared with less than four in ten in 2012. However, the real story is that growth has stalled. Apart from the oldest cohort, smartphone adoption is largely complete.
The average Irish home now contains eight smart devices, a figure unchanged since 2022. Tablet and laptop ownership has slipped as ever more capable phones absorb their functions. The era of selling more screens to more people is behind us, according to Luke Reaper, CEO of Ipsos B&A. We will acquire better, more advanced kit in the future, but there are only so many screens we need.
The evidence for that shift is already in the data. The use of personal email (86%), online banking (76%), digital wallets (52%), and digital banks (52%) are all climbing, while entertainment streaming has broadly tapped out. Technology has stopped being a discretionary toy and become essential infrastructure — as non-negotiable, in many homes, as electricity. More than half the population (56%) now say broadband matters more to their household than television, a figure that holds among even a third of Baby Boomers (now 62-80 years of age).
2. A Two-Speed Ireland
Saturation, however, is not the same as inclusion. Beneath the national averages lies a stubborn divide drawn along lines of socio-economic status, age and geography. Middle-class (ABC1) homes contain ten smart devices on average; blue-collar (C2DE) homes, six. Dublin households have nine; those outside the capital, eight. The sharpest fault line, though, is generational: a quarter of over-65s never go online at all, and only one in four are confident that they are keeping up with technology. The latter has massive implications for customer experience and delivery.
The same pattern repeats in the world of work. Remote working has become a permanent feature for around half the workforce, but access is heavily concentrated among the Dublin-based middle class. Some 64% of Dublin workers can work from home, against 42% elsewhere; 60% of ABC1 workers, against just 30% of C2DE. Some of that reflects the practicalities of occupation — a house cannot be plumbed remotely — but the wider effect is that flexibility itself has become a marker of advantage.
There is a commerce dimension too. Online shopping is thriving but skews younger: 78% of Gen Z buy clothes online, against just 32% of Baby Boomers, and one in five of us now buy our groceries online. This is not interpreted as a one-way street, with 53% of shoppers — and 73% of Gen Z — researching products on their phones while standing in a physical store The lesson here is that physical and digital experiences must work as one. Premature withdrawal from the high street risks abandoning loyal, profitable customers who are not yet ready to follow.
3. The Trust Deficit
If the first great theme of TechScape 2026 is saturation, the second is suspicion. Concern about how organisations use personal data has risen sharply — 71% now worry about it, up from 66% a year earlier, with worry about data privacy online climbing to 64% from 57%. A majority feel actively targeted by advertising, and, tellingly, the resentment this breeds attaches not only to the platform carrying the advert but to the advertised brand itself.
The numbers are stark. Net sentiment toward the platform on which an ad appears sits at -37; toward the advertising brand, -35. One in three consumers say they take active steps to avoid ads — clicking “not relevant”, using ad blockers, browsing anonymously or paying for ad-free tiers — rising to 44% among Gen Z, precisely the audience brands most want to reach.
The remedy is not to abandon personalisation but to earn it: to move from covert tracking to a transparent ‘value exchange’ in which people are told what is collected, why, and what they get in return — and where opting out is made genuinely easy. In an age of resentment, restraint has quietly become a brand asset.
4. The AI Paradox
Nowhere is the public mood more conflicted than in relation to artificial intelligence. Use of generative AI has surged to 38% of adults in a single year, up from 22% in 2025 — some 1.6 million people — split between 36% using it for personal tasks and 23% for work. As with so much else, the uptake is uneven, skewing young, middle-class and Dublin-centric: 58% of Gen Z and ABC1 adults use it, against 19% of C2DE and 10% of Baby Boomers.
Here lies the paradox that is most arresting. Conventional wisdom holds that familiarity breeds comfort. With AI, the opposite appears to be happening: the more people use it, the more anxious they become. Some 71% now fear AI will replace many human jobs — up from 57% in 2023 — and 67% worry it will hinder students’ ability to learn.
Crucially, the fear is not technophobia. Seven in ten Irish adults (71%) agree that new technology is essential to the country’s prosperity, and 60% are confident in their own ability to adapt. The public is not asking to be protected from technology. It is asking to be brought along honestly.
5. The Attention Reckoning
The final theme is perhaps the most human. The always-on culture is exacting a cost the country is only beginning to tally. More than half of adults (54%) check their phone first thing in the morning and last thing at night. Some 35% check work email on holiday — up from 25% in 2025 — and two in five say technology is harming family life at home.
Almost seven in ten (69%) believe society has lost the art of conversation, and 72% worry that children’s ability to communicate in person has been stunted. Most sobering of all, 57% of women under 35 have witnessed or experienced gender-based harassment online, against 36% of the population overall — a reminder that the costs of the attention economy are not evenly shared.
That sense of fracture extends to society at large. Seven in ten feel social media has worsened relations between different groups, with the sharpest perceived damage in respect of immigration (54% say it has made relations worse), political belief (53%) and ethnicity (49%). Technology built to connect, by the public’s own account, is increasingly driving people apart.
There are, mercifully, green shoots. A third of adults now switch off notifications on occasion — most commonly Dubliners (44%) and the under-25s (43%) — and the youngest, most digitally-fluent cohort is beginning to pull back from the platforms it once lived on. The pendulum, perhaps, is starting to swing.
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The Future and the Trust Dividend
The benefits of our advancements in tech are well understood, with a focus on improvements to health, transport, home help, and assistance. However, this is paired with clear fears surrounding job losses, AI-generated content, AI influence in elections, and Ireland’s culture being dominated by tech companies.
People expect near-term AI utility and advancements but worry about jobs, information integrity, & cultural sovereignty. So, where does this leave Ireland? Saturated, dependent and ambivalent: enthusiastic about technology’s promise, yet increasingly wary of its price.
“The trust dividend is real, and it is there to be earned. Lead with service, not specs. Close the digital divide. Treat responsible data use as a visible promise rather than as fine print. Earn your mandate on AI through transparency. And protect people’s attention as if it were the scarce, precious thing it has become. Do those things, and trust builds. Ignore them, and so does resentment. The choice, genuinely, is ours.”
Luke Reaper, CEO, Ipsos Ireland
Author: Luke Reaper, CEO Ireland
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