A Word From The Project Leaders
Welcome to Ireland’s Project Economy 2025, this longitudinal study is now in its fifth year. The report profiles Irish high-skilled independent professionals, also known as professional contractors, freelancers and solo-self employed workers.
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. Our survey was carried over late November and early December 2024. There were 1,514 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 841 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. (2025) ‘Ireland’s Project Economy 2025: A Barometer of Independent Professionals, Contractors and Solo Self-Employed’. February 2025. Dublin: Trinity College Dublin Press. ISBN 978-1-911566-49-6 https://doi.org/10.25546/110827
The Project Leaders
Pictured left to right:
Professor Andrew Burke, Trinity Business School
Professor Na Fu, Trinity Business School
Jimmy Sheehan, MD. Contracting PLUS