Ireland Reaching Out surveyed diaspora members across the globe for its 2026 Global Diaspora Survey.
A sweeping new survey of the global Irish diaspora has uncovered what its authors call an "untapped" opportunity worth up to €7.4 billion a year for Irish tourism, food, retail and financial services. The findings, published this week by the charity Ireland Reaching Out, suggest that millions of people worldwide with Irish ancestry are actively seeking ways to reconnect with the homeland, and that Ireland's businesses and government agencies have yet to catch up.
Ireland Reaching Out, known as IrelandXO, surveyed 2,709 diaspora members worldwide for its 2026 Global Diaspora Survey. The organization, which has worked since 2009 to link Irish emigrants and their descendants with their ancestral parishes through a reverse-genealogy model, says the results confirm something it has long suspected. The diaspora is not a passive group waiting to be sold to, but an engaged community waiting to be given the tools to connect.
"This survey confirms what Ireland Reaching Out has always believed, that the Irish Diaspora is not a passive audience waiting to be marketed to, but an active, willing community waiting to be properly resourced and connected," the organization said. "The scale of demand should reshape how both Diaspora bodies and Irish state agencies think about engagement."
The numbers back that up. Eighty-one percent of respondents said they want to connect online with others who share Irish ancestry, and 75 percent said it matters to them to connect with people tied to their own ancestors' home locality, the exact kind of parish-level connection IXO was built to provide. More than two-thirds, 68 percent, said they are interested in sharing Irish cultural content within the wider diaspora community.
For Irish businesses, the most striking figure may be this one. Sixty-six percent of respondents, or 1,796 people surveyed, said they are interested in Irish products and services. IXO describes this as a built-in, emotionally invested consumer base that could make it far easier for Irish food and drink producers to break into new export markets, a signal it says should catch the attention of state agencies like Bord Bia and Enterprise Ireland.
The appetite for connection does not stop at the shopping cart. The survey also points to real interest in financial ties to Ireland, with respondents expressing what IXO calls "significant latent appetite" to invest in Irish businesses and communities. That could open the door to diaspora bonds, heritage-linked crowdfunding campaigns and other community investment vehicles. Separately, the survey suggests an underused pipeline of international talent and business knowledge, as diaspora members also expressed interest in professional and enterprise connections with Ireland.
Perhaps the clearest gap between desire and reality shows up in the numbers on citizenship. Just over half of respondents, 51 percent, said they would like to hold an Irish passport, yet 83 percent currently hold neither Irish citizenship nor a passport. That disparity, IXO says, has real implications for how Ireland approaches policy and administrative services for its diaspora going forward.
Taken together, the organization's economic modeling estimates that fully harnessing this diaspora opportunity could add somewhere between €3.35 billion and €7.4 billion to Irish economic activity annually within a decade.
The survey also sketches a portrait of who exactly makes up this engaged global community. Respondents span the world, are predominantly women (63 percent), and many have stuck with Ireland Reaching Out for years. The largest single group has been active with the organization for five years or more, and most have been engaged for at least two years. One notable gap stood out to researchers: the near absence of respondents under the age of 30, which IXO frames as the next big challenge, reaching the children and grandchildren of today's diaspora before that connection fades.
With the findings now public, Ireland Reaching Out is calling on diaspora organizations, Irish businesses and government departments to treat the data as a shared roadmap rather than a one-off report.
"We're publishing this data because we want every Diaspora organization, every Irish business, and every relevant government department to see the same picture we do: a global community that is ready, willing, and asking to be engaged," the organization said. "Now is the time to act on it together."
Ireland Reaching Out says it is inviting collaboration from diaspora groups worldwide on next steps, including joint digital community projects and coordinated engagement with Irish state agencies and industry partners. Full results of the 2026 Global Diaspora Survey are available on the organization's website.