Snapshot poll: Budget aftermath and Government spending draw most voter attention

With potentially less than a fortnight until a general election is called, the aftermath of Budget 2025 and Government spending are the main topics to capture voters’ attention in the last month, according to the latest Irish Times/Ipsos Snapshot poll.
When asked what they have noticed about what the Government has said or done recently, 19 per cent of respondents referenced the budget and spending. Housing continues to be one of the biggest topics dominating the attention of voters.
Some 12 per cent of respondents nominated housing as the issue that had caught their attention, while 11 per cent referenced social policies.
When budget measures that relate directly to an area of policy – such as increases in allowances and benefits – were mentioned, these were included under the relevant policy heading and not under the budget and spending heading. Sentiment towards this year’s €10.5 billion budget was mixed, with 45 per cent of responses categorised as positive and 53 per cent as negative.
Immigration remains a key issue that is being noticed by voters, but the topic is now at its lowest ranking this year, at 8 per cent. The theme of education also accounts for 8 per cent of what Snapshot respondents noticed, up 5 points.
This comes in the wake of controversy around Department of Education budget plans to spend €9 million on pouches to lock students’ phones away. Some survey respondents did not deem this a good use of public funds. The controversy around the €336,000 Dáil bike shed is still being noticed, although there was a month-on-month drop from 12 per cent to 5 per cent.
The cost-of-living/inflation was noticed by 4 per cent of respondents, only slightly up on the previous two months.
The survey does not investigate what people regard as the most important issue; it seeks to establish what people are noticing about what the Government is doing and whether they have a positive or negative view of that.
Snapshot is the monthly attention poll designed to track which Coalition messages are cutting through. It asks the following question: “What have you come across in what the Government has said or done recently that has made you think the country is going in the right or wrong direction?”
Respondents’ answers are then collated and sorted by issue and whether they view the Government in a positive or negative light as a result.
This question is asked of 1,000 citizens each month.
The data was collected using Omnipoll, Ipsos’s telephone omnibus survey, which interviews a fresh, nationally representative sample of 1,000 adults aged 15-plus every two weeks. The sample used is RDD (random digit dialling) and includes mobile and landline phone numbers. At analysis stage, the data is weighted in line with the known profile of the population according to the latest Central Statistics Office estimates. The results presented here exclude those who said “don’t know/nothing/no opinion” to the question. Fieldwork for the latest wave of Snapshot was conducted between October 1st-14th.