MORE THAN half of Irish people believe the economic situation will worsen in the next year, according a new EU survey.
With unemployment and the fiscal situation the prime concerns, the survey says 95 per cent of Irish respondents in an autumn series of interviews judged the economy to be in “bad” condition.
This was a greater proportion than seen in an EU-wide survey in which 75 per cent of respondents throughout the union at large declared their national economies to be in a negative place.
Positive sentiment is very scarce in Ireland, the survey shows. Even though the wider European survey suggests that “scars remain” throughout the union, it also points to the emergence of positive trends in the EU at large since earlier this year.
“Compared to spring 2009, many more Europeans now express the view that the crisis has reached its peak. Even if the feeling that the worst is still to come continues to dominate public opinion, the survey reveals signs of optimism among Europeans,” the Eurobarometer survey said.
“The economic ‘feel-bad’ factor appears to be fading: for the first time since autumn 2007, short-term expectations about the economic situation are moving in a positive direction. However, the expectation that the national employment situation will worsen continues to dominate public opinion.”
Some 65 per cent of Irish participants believe the worst is yet to come in the crisis, down one percentage point since the spring. This remains higher than in the EU, where 54 per cent of respondents say the situation will worsen, a figure that fell seven percentage points since spring.
While the proportion of Irish respondents who said the impact of the crisis on jobs had reached its peak rose seven percentage points to 28 per cent in the autumn survey, the comparable EU-wide figure rose 10 percentage points to 38 per cent.
Some 54 per cent of Irish respondents said the economic situation will be worse in 12 months time, seven percentage points more than last spring, and 26 per cent said it would be the same, six percentage points less than in the spring survey.
Only 16 per cent of Irish respondents said the economic situation would be better in a year’s time, compared with 28 per cent of respondents in the wider EU.
The European Commission interviewed 1,011 Irish participants in its latest Eurobarometer survey at the end of October and early November. A total of 26,731 people participated in face-to-face interviews throughout the union.
Asked to identify the two most important “personal issues” they faced, 44 per cent of Irish respondents cited the general economic situation and 32 per cent cited unemployment.