This release is categorised as a CSO Frontier Series Output. Particular care must be taken when interpreting the statistics in this release as it may use new methods which are under development and/or data sources which may be incomplete, for example new administrative data sources. For further information on the data sources, linking procedures and limitations of this report, see the Background Notes section.
The total Personal Retirement Savings Accounts (PRSAs) assets value in 2024 was €18.3bn, an increase of 53.8% compared with the 2023 figure of €11.9bn.
In 2024 there were 258,168 individual contributors to PRSAs, a rise of 13.6% compared with the 2023 figure of 227,324. This increase in contributors is broadly spread across age groups, sex, earnings levels, industrial sector and enterprise size for employees.
Comparing 2024 and 2023, standard PRSA assets grew by 26% from €5.3bn to €6.7bn and non-standard PRSA assets were up by 76% from €6.6bn to €11.6bn.
Between 2019 and 2024, the proportion of non-standard PRSAs increased from 25% to 37%, 10% of which occurred in just two years between 2022 and 2024.
Males made up 58% of all PRSA contributors in 2024 but accounted for 67% of the total PRSA assets value.
For people who started a PRSA in 2019, just 48% made any contribution to their PRSA in 2024.
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Statistician's Comment
The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has today (06 June 2025) published Analysis of Personal Retirement Savings Accounts (PRSAs) 2024.
This is a new release which aims to provide insight into Ireland’s PRSA market. It should be noted that this is a CSO Frontier Series output, which means particular care must be taken when interpreting the statistics in this release as it may use new methods which are under development and/or data sources which may be incomplete.
Commenting on the release, Fiachra Cahill, Statistician with the Statistical Systems Co-ordination Unit of the CSO, said: “This new release presents an analysis of Personal Retirement Savings Accounts (PRSAs). This release refers to standard and non-standard PRSAs. Standard PRSAs must be invested in pooled funds, and a cap is set on the fees charged to contributors. Non-standard PRSAs have no maximum limits on charges and allow investment in different types of funds. See Background Notes for more details.
Overall, we can see there were 258,168 PRSA contributors in 2024, with a combined total assets value of €18.3bn. This was up 53.6% from 2023, when the total assets value of PRSAs was €11.8bn.
Looking at the contributors in detail, males accounted for 58% of contributors, 67% of the total PRSA assets, and had median assets value of €21,008. Females accounted for 42% of contributors, 33% of the total assets value, and had median assets value of €15,780. In terms of age, 94,721 contributors were in the 45–54 years age range.
We also conducted an analysis of how often PRSA contributors were making contributions to their PRSA savings. We found that over time, there is a steady drop-off in people making at least one yearly contribution to their PRSA. It went from 100% of people making a least one yearly contribution to their PRSA in the year it was started, but within five years, this had fallen to fewer than 50% of people who made at least one contribution.
Of particular interest were the changes over time in the number of contributors and the total assets value. While there was a steady increase in the number of contributors from 184,755 in 2019 to 206,302 in 2022, which was an 11% increase over this period, this rose by 25% to 258,168 in the two years from 2022 to 2024.
Some 66% of new contributors in 2023 and 2024 were to non-standard PRSAs. This led to an overall increase in this period from 27% to 37% of all contributors being to non-standard PRSAs."