Smiles All Round: When It Comes to Happiness, Us Irish Are Having a Right Laugh

Despite the fact that the Government just issued one of the toughest budgets Ireland has ever seen, according to some new research, we’re still one of the happiest countries in the world. Yes, believe it or not.

The Irish Independent reports that researchers from the School of Psychology at Trinity College Dublin tested the mood of 3,309 participants via text message. The text messages were used because the study was conducted in collaboration with Vodafone for the National Happiness Experiment.

Surprisingly, Ireland managed to score an ecstatic 6.8 in the survey, which asked people to assess their own level of personal satisfactions.

Smiley happy people: Despite the hard times, our optimism is still strong

What does this mean? Well, when you put it all into perspective, this score tells us that we’re actually happier than most of the world, including Germany and the US.

The findings of the research have been compiled in a book called Happy Nation?  which is on sale now. Half of the proceeds from the sales of the book will go towards St Vincent de Paul.

We have to ask – despite everything are you relatively happy?