New figures from the Central Statistics Office show that Irish perople were online more than ever in the first half of 2025 and are increasingly reliant on technology and digital services.
The CSO's Internet Coverage and Usage in Ireland figures, which covers the first six months of this year, reveals that 95% of people aged 16 years and over were recent users of the internet - meaning they had used it within the three months prior to the survey - up two percentage points from 2024.
Of these recent internet users, 95% said they went online every day or almost every day.
The CSO said that just 5% of people aged 16 years and over had never used the internet, down a percentage point from 2024. But it noted that this mainly related to older people where 34% of those aged 75 and over had never used the internet.
Today's figures also show that people are accessing the internet more frequently on a daily basis.
Of daily internet users, 42% said they used it all the time or nearly all the time. 57% of people aged 16 to 29 years used the internet almost constantly - with 22% saying they used it all the time, while a further 34% used it nearly all the time.
The CSO said that students were the most frequent users of the internet in the six-month period under review. All students used the internet every day or almost every day.
Of these daily internet users, 97% went online at least several times a day, while 39% said they used the internet several times a day. A further 37% of students used the internet nearly all the time, and 21% used the internet all the time.
Older people used the internet the least in the first six months of 2025, although their internet usage increased compared with the same time in 2024, the CSO said.
63% of people aged 75 years and over used the internet within the three months prior to survey, up from 54% in 2024, today's CSO figures show.
Of these, 77% used the internet daily, up from 75% in 2024, with 61% of these daily internet users going online at least several times a day.
The CSO also said that 95% of households in Ireland now have internet connectivity.
Looking at internet access on a regional basis, household internet connectivity was highest for the Dublin region at 97% of households.
This compared with 93% of households in the Border (Cavan, Donegal, Leitrim, Monaghan, and Sligo), Mid-West (Clare, Limerick, and Tipperary), and South-East (Carlow, Kilkenny, Waterford, and Wexford) regions.
The CSO noted that household internet access was mainly via fixed broadband access (87%), up one percentage point from 2024.
Fixed broadband connection was highest in the Dublin region at 91% of households, compared with the Border region (80%).
Of the 5% of households with no internet access, the most common reason given was that they did not need the internet (59%), followed by lack of skills (17%).
4% of these households with no internet access stated that broadband internet was not available in their area.
