A new survey has found that more than a third of people have had some difficulty paying bills and meeting credit commitments.
The survey also found that a total of 17% of the adult population do not have a current account and 61% do not have a credit card.
Just over a third of adults have some form of life insurance and 43% have credit union accounts.
The Financial Regulator carried out the study to find out if people are making informed decisions in relation to their financial affairs.
It is the regulator's first research into financial capability.
Although the findings have been made available, the regulator is reluctant to say whether Irish people are financially capable or not.
Full analysis of the research will be published later this year.
Among its most worrying preliminary findings is that 37% of people have recently had some degree of difficulty keeping up with bills and credit commitments.
For people who have recently divorced or separated this figure jumps to 60 and 62%.
The research was carried out late last year, before a steep decline in retail sales and thousands of job losses.
Up to 13% of the general population have experienced financial difficulties in the last five years.
In the 21 to 35 age group this figure goes up to 20%.
27% of people say they would not know how to go about making a complaint to a financial services firm; this compares with only 9% who say they would not know how to complain in a shop.
A quarter of the respondents said that they or their partners had, over the last three years, experienced a large and unexpected drop in income.
16% said they had experienced a major unexpected expense, equivalent to a month's pay.
