Consumer sentiment has fallen to its lowest level in more than a year, according to a new survey by KBC Bank Ireland and the ESRI.
The consumer sentiment index fell to 98.1 in May from 102.7 in April - its third monthly decline in the past four months and the weakest reading since March 2015.
The report shows that people remain optimistic about the country's economy as a whole, but they have become more cautious about their own prospects in the year ahead.
Of respondents to the May survey, 49% said they expected the economy to strengthen in the next 12 months, but that was down from 62% in the January survey.
May also saw a marked weakening of sentiment in relation to jobs, today's survey reveals.
KBC said that while there is still a solid view that Ireland's jobs market should continue to improve, confidence seems to have taken somewhat of a knock in the latest survey.
Austin Hughes, chief economist at KBC Bank Ireland, said that a couple of high profile developments, including job losses at Intel, gave rise to some concerns in relation to the health of the Irish jobs market.
"The prospective loss of a large number of jobs at this high profile employer is likely to have focussed attention on the increased fragility of employment even in relatively successful sectors of the Irish economy," the economist said.
"We previously noted that consumer sentiment is likely to respond more forcefully to news of significant job losses than to similar scale new job announcements because the threat from the former resonates more strongly with the average consumer than any opportunity presented by the latter," he stated.
He also said that May saw indications of a more general problems in the Irish labour market in the shape of high profile industrial relations disputes at the Luas and Tesco.
"As the recovery in the Irish economy progresses and unemployment falls, the implications for pay looks set to be a challenging issue and recent difficulties in this regard may have weighed on consumers' assessments of the health of the Irish jobs market at present," he stated.
