A Word From The Project Leaders

Trinity College Dublin and Contracting PLUS are delighted to collaborate on this unique study, which examines the contribution this key cohort have to employment and the economy in Ireland. This is the only report of its kind completed in Ireland and this report has been produced entirely digitally, in line with both companies strong commitment to sustainability.

The focus of our research is to explore the extent and nature of the Independent Professional sector in Ireland and the key challenges it faces. This is the sixth report in the series. Survey responses were collected in December 2025. For consistency across the series, all findings are referenced as 2026 data, this reflects the year of publication, not the fieldwork period. This dating convention is used for consistency across the series. It aligns with the methodology applied in the previous six reports.

There were 1,952 respondents comprising the main stakeholders of the project economy eco-system including, high skilled independent contractors both full time and part-time, organisations who hire high-skilled independent contractors, as well as some employees, unemployed and retired individuals. In terms of data focused on the independent contractors themselves, for consistency our analysis focused only on full time independent contractors with some further filtering of the sample to remove cases with incomplete and erroneous data, leading to a sample of 1,416 independent contractors.

We hope you find these insights as interesting as we did.

To cite this report: Burke, A., Fu, N., Sheehan, J., Penney, G., & Kapoor, H. (2026). Ireland’s Project Economy 2026: A Barometer of Independent Professionals, Contractors and Solo Self-Employed. Trinity College Dublin. https://doi.org/10.25546/112702 ISBN: 978-1-911566-65-6