Ireland’s Loneliness Epidemic

Ireland has long been celebrated globally for its warmth, wit, and “céad míle fáilte” — a hundred thousand welcomes. Yet recent data reveals that this nation renowned for its hospitality now ranks as the loneliest place in Europe. Official figures from the Joint Research Centre report on loneliness prevalence in the EU show that 20 per cent of Irish people have reported feeling lonely most or all of the time, the highest level in the EU, where the average is just 13 per cent [1]. For a country that prides itself on community and connection, this signals a fundamental challenge to social cohesion, public health, and economic productivity.

The scale and consequences of this epidemic extend far beyond emotional discomfort. Professor Brian Lawlor, professor of old-age psychiatry and site director of the Global Brain Health Institute at Trinity College Dublin, has researched loneliness for three decades. “For people who are more lonely or isolated, their cognitive reserve is decreased so they’re more at risk of developing dementia,” he explains. “People who are lonely are also at an increased risk of developing depression. Physical health wise, there’s increased risk of mortality for people who are chronically lonely. Heart attack, stroke, hypertension, sleep disturbance — all of these things are associated with loneliness.” [2]

The comparison to other health risks is stark. As Dr Maureen Gaffney notes, “the adverse effect of loneliness on your health is roughly equivalent to the damage done by smoking 15 cigarettes a day or being an alcoholic, and is greater than the effect of chronic obesity.” [3] In the United States, Medicare spends almost $7 billion annually treating the effects of social isolation on elderly patients [4]. The World Health Organisation recognised the gravity of the situation when it declared loneliness a “pressing health threat” in November 2023 and launched a new commission to foster social connections. [5]

The roots of the crisis

Understanding why Ireland has become Europe’s loneliest nation requires examining multiple intersecting factors. Professor Lawlor identifies increasing individualism as a primary driver. “I think a number of things are happening, the first of which is that Ireland has become more individualistic, no doubt about that,” he says. “I think people are looking to be more independent and not show vulnerability. I think that can bring risks.” [6]

The housing crisis has placed enormous strain on social life. High rents and scarcity have left young adults unable to secure independent homes, forcing them to remain in multigenerational households or shared accommodations. “I do think other trends, like the housing crisis and homelessness, are having an impact, on a generation of younger people particularly,” Professor Lawlor adds. “If they have to stay at home, it’s harder to connect to their peers. The sense that they may never have their own independence or their own home probably causes a degree of stress and loneliness as well.” [7]

Dr Joanna McHugh Power, associate professor in psychology at Maynooth University and chair of the Loneliness Taskforce Research Network, points to structural factors. “Ireland may have high levels of loneliness because of its age profile, rurality and high levels of inward and outward migration,” she explains. [8] Indeed, both inward and outward migration have been associated with increased levels of loneliness, affecting those who depart and those left behind. Ireland also has one of the lowest population densities of all EU countries, with more people living outside urban areas than in many other states. [9]

The COVID-19 pandemic served as what Professor Lawlor calls “a horrible human experiment which really showed up the impact of restrictions and isolation”. Whilst many aspects of life have recovered, the social dimension has not fully rebounded. “We have recovered from that, but maybe not completely,” he notes. “There’s this hybrid model of working from home, and people are more inclined to text us or go online. When was the last time you said you were going to call someone? There’s a loss of touch and a lot of physical, face-to-face contact. That does change the landscape.” [10]

The US surgeon general Vivek Murthy lamented that “it’s not the culture for people to talk to each other anymore. Many of us are more likely to wish someone we know a happy birthday on Facebook or abbreviate a text to HBD rather than pick up the phone and say it to them.” [11] This digital displacement of genuine connection represents a profound shift in how relationships are maintained.

The victims

Whilst loneliness was once primarily associated with older and rural people, in modern Ireland it doesn’t discriminate. Research from the University of Limerick has revealed particularly concerning trends among young adults. “The one thing people said that was quite interesting was that, because they’re not expecting to be lonely, they don’t have anywhere to go with it,” explains Ann-Marie Creaven, senior lecturer in psychology at UL. “People say to them, ‘Surely you’re having the time of your life?’ or ‘But sure you have 20 million followers on Instagram?’ They don’t want to go to their friends about feeling lonely because they felt it might be insulting to tell a friend, because what are you saying about your friendships if it’s not enough for you?” [12]

Joanna McHugh-Power emphasises the particular vulnerability of those who came of age during the pandemic. “The group I’d feel most sorry for and concerned about in terms of chronic loneliness would be that group who were teenagers or moving into early adulthood during the COVID pandemic,” she says. “Those are the years that you really lay down those social habits. And if they’re not there, I think it could be very difficult.” [13]

An OECD report published in October 2025 confirmed that people aged 16 to 24 were found to be the most likely group in Ireland to report feeling “lonely most or all of the time over the past four weeks”, with the reported loneliness figure significantly ahead of the rate for those aged 65 or over. Only Sweden, Switzerland and Denmark mirrored this pattern among the 23 countries covered. [14] CSO figures for 2022 indicated a fifth of all young people experienced feelings of loneliness, with 5.6 per cent saying they were lonely most or all of the time, a figure that remained unchanged in 2024 despite the passing of the pandemic. [15]

The loneliness affecting young people manifests differently than in older populations. Creaven notes that some of those interviewed in the University of Limerick research “gave very detailed descriptions of their loneliness. Some described it as painful, others as an emptiness. It was often about other people not valuing them. They felt no one cared enough about them. They weren’t someone’s ‘person’. I thought it was an interesting thing to hear from that age group. There’s also a sense among young people that loneliness is stigmatised, and they don’t want people to know they’re lonely, so they try to hide it a bit.” [16]

Mike Mansfield of Jigsaw, a charity that campaigns on young people’s mental health, emphasises the pandemic’s lasting impact. “You can’t have a conversation about loneliness without talking about Covid. That had a really significant impact on young people, massively disturbing their daily life and pulling them out of the social connections and structures they had and away from groups of mates. Then they were thrown back into it and I think for a huge number of people that reintegration back into society, probably more so even than the actual lockdown itself, has been really difficult as they found it very difficult to navigate how to form and maintain decent, meaningful relationships.” [17]

Among older adults, the situation remains acute. TILDA research has found loneliness to be “a persistent and powerful factor influencing the health and wellbeing of older adults”. Whilst loneliness scores more than doubled during the pandemic, a significant proportion of older adults continue to experience loneliness, and this experience is associated with poorer health outcomes including functional limitations, poorer self-rated health, and a higher number of depressive symptoms. Loneliness has also been linked to the wish to die among older adults. [18]

The male loneliness epidemic

The experience of loneliness differs markedly by gender, with men facing particular challenges in forming and maintaining meaningful connections. Louise McSharry, writing about the male loneliness epidemic, recounts a telling anecdote: “Years ago, I enquired about one of my partner’s friends who had recently gone through a break-up. ‘How’s he doing after the break-up?’ I asked. ‘Oh I dunno, we didn’t talk about it,’ was the response. What had they talked about? Well, they spent the evening coming up with their ultimate football squad. As a woman, it is absolutely unthinkable that you would meet a friend who had recently broken up with a partner and not spend at least an hour discussing it. Emotional support is the basis of most of my female friendships.” [19]

This observation is supported by research on BFFinder, a website co-founded by Liam Burke and Louanne Howley in 2019 to help Irish people find friendships. Seventy per cent of the site’s users are female. “Men can be a bit more closed off in terms of making friends,” Burke explains. “If you can’t talk about football as a man, you can’t really talk to anyone. Women are probably more comfortable having the chats.” [20]

Conor Creighton, who co-founded Dublin Boys Club with artist Maser in response to rising suicide levels, anxiety and depression among young men, identifies the roots of this problem. “I do a lot of coaching work and I hear a lot about loneliness from people. This is a result of the programming of masculinity — we’re taught as men to repress our emotions and never show weakness. I think this is where loneliness comes in. Some people are just avoiding big parts of themselves as a way of surviving.” [21]

The consequences are severe. In Ireland, men die by suicide four times more than women. Whilst it would be overly simplistic to attribute this solely to loneliness, the connection between social isolation and mental health outcomes cannot be ignored. [22] Marketing and communications company Core released research in 2023 which found that three in five Irish adults experience loneliness at times, with single men lonelier than single women. [23]

Structural barriers

Beyond individual circumstances, Ireland faces significant structural challenges that impede social connection. Joanna McHugh-Power highlights a critical infrastructure gap: “The thing with Ireland is we have great commercial spaces for people to get together. If you’re willing to spend money on cafes and things like that, you can meet your friends. But we have pretty poor other ‘third spaces’ available to us. All of that stuff amounts to the social infrastructure of a country, and it’s pretty poor in Ireland. At a policy level, these are things that could be changed, providing people with spaces where they can meet up in a way that’s cost neutral. We have the added challenge in Ireland because of the weather, so we have to be really thoughtful about how we create those social spaces.” [24]

Christopher Swader, associate professor at Lund University in Sweden and co-author of research on Ireland’s loneliness crisis, goes further, describing Ireland as having “park, cafe and library deserts”. He suggests that Ireland is the only country in all the EU countries surveyed that relies on “commercial pathways” to resolving loneliness, lacking free social spaces for the population to meet and socialise. [25]

Ann-Marie Creaven points to changes in child-rearing practices that have long-term social consequences. “Parents are more safety conscious, and are having smaller families as well. You’re not getting to know your siblings’ friends or neighbours out on the road. You don’t have those extra connections. You’re not as free range as you were before, and you don’t have as wide a network. There’s something missing around the child-rearing village. It’s not about help, it’s that kids got to know other people. Now you’re being driven to activities, and ‘I wouldn’t let you in that house if I didn’t know them’.” [26]

Confronting the crisis

The severity of Ireland’s loneliness epidemic demands comprehensive policy responses. The Loneliness Taskforce, a cross-agency and multi-expert coalition established in 2018 by former senator Keith Swanwick, has been urging the government to develop an action plan for combating loneliness. As of late June 2024, the decision to establish a specialist government group relating to older people’s mental health remained under review. [27] By September 2024, the Taskforce was calling on the government to commit to targets in Budget 2025 to address what member organisations describe as “a growing health and social issue which poses a significant problem for their service users, who come from all age groups and backgrounds.” [28]

Sean Moynihan, CEO of Alone, which works with older people including those who are lonely and isolated, emphasises that whilst older people living alone are more likely to be lonely, “loneliness is an issue which affects all age groups, and is a nationwide issue.” [29] The charity believes the government must play its part, noting that “the lack of a single public office in the healthcare system tasked with getting to grips with loneliness tells its own story.” Alone advocates for an action plan funded by the government to deliver targeted, research-based actions. [30]

Several international models offer guidance. The United Kingdom established a dedicated Minister for Loneliness in 2018, Japan created its own loneliness ministerial post, and the United States Surgeon General declared loneliness a public health crisis in a 2023 advisory. In 2023, Canada became the first country to create both individual and community level public health guidelines for social connection. [31]

Professor Lawlor argues for systemic change: “One important message we need to get across to people is that anyone and everyone can become lonely. We need to get loneliness into the programme for government, and you need to introduce change at a population level, at a systemic level. We need to do more research in terms of understanding the precise approaches that they need to treat their loneliness. We know one size doesn’t fit all. If you build a society for connection, you will prevent a lot of bad things happening, not just loneliness.” [32]

Community-led solutions

Whilst awaiting comprehensive government action, numerous grassroots initiatives have emerged to combat isolation. Men’s Sheds have been joined by Women’s Sheds and Sister Sheds, the latter now boasting around 1,000 members in 23 branches across the country. “Coming out of lockdown, we identified a need where we women were all anxious to get back to society, to make friends and reduce isolation,” says Sherin Hughes, co-founder and CEO of Sister Sheds. “Twenty or 30 people showed up to our first one in Finglas, and I was shocked to see that.” [33]

For Ann Burke, a Wexford-based woman who experienced profound loneliness after losing her partner Tom in 2019, followed by both parents within four months, joining a local sea swimming group proved transformative. “I wanted to do it for my physical well-being, but it became much more than that. We sit around afterwards and we chat. What I love about it is that it doesn’t matter where you’re from and what your background is. It gives you back the confidence that grief takes away. It’s personally been a life-saver for me.” [34]

Technology-enabled solutions have also emerged. Elena Stropute, country manager for Timeleft, an app that algorithmically matches six people to go for a meal together offline, reports strong uptake since launching in Dublin in early March 2024 and Cork in April, with over 6,000 users in Dublin alone. “We’ve gotten great feedback, saying how it has gotten people out of their comfort zone, and everyone’s been pleasantly surprised. We want to bring real-life connections back in.” [35]

Social prescribing, where health professionals refer people to community-based activities such as community gardening, walking groups, and parkruns, represents another promising approach. Dr David Robinson, consultant geriatrician at St James’s Hospital and co-chair of the All Ireland Social Prescribing Network, notes that whilst Ireland lacks domestic evidence, “in the UK, there is evidence that it reduces loneliness.” A Donegal study found a 20 per cent reduction in GP visits among those who took up activities of their choice. [36]

Next steps

Ireland stands at a critical juncture. The European Commission’s recognition that “loneliness is not inevitable and it is not an individual but a societal issue” points the way forward. [37] Addressing Ireland’s loneliness epidemic requires action across multiple fronts: ministerial leadership and dedicated funding, expansion of non-commercial social spaces, reform of housing policy to enable young adults to establish independent households, thoughtful regulation of digital platforms, workplace models that balance flexibility with social connection, and integration of loneliness screening into primary healthcare.

As the feelings of anger and hostility fostered by loneliness reshape political landscapes globally, with those who feel isolated and abandoned more likely to support extremist parties, Ireland must recognise that social connection is not merely a matter of individual wellbeing but a foundation of social cohesion. [38]

The irony is profound: a nation globally celebrated for its hospitality and warmth now leads Europe in loneliness. Yet within that irony lies hope. Ireland’s cultural traditions of storytelling, music, and communal gathering have not disappeared; they require conscious revival and protection. The solutions exist, from policy reform to community initiatives to individual choices about how we connect. What’s required now is the collective will to act, before more people suffer alone in a land once famous for ensuring no one did.