A tale of two Irelands
By Dan Buckley and Paul Kelly
28 June 2006
IT is a tale of two Irelands: one rich, one poor, one prosperous and productive, another rife with poverty and social exclusion.
It tells of a population outperforming the rest of the EU in everything from fertility to jobs while, at the same time, leaving one-fifth of the nation in its turbulent wake.
The report, Measuring Ireland’s Progress, 2005, published by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) yesterday, shows that 21% of us face poverty and, despite three decades of equality legislation, women are more likely to be poor and still earn less than men.
The figures reveal an Ireland changing for the better economically but not socially.
The good news, according to the report, is that where a citizen in the 1920s was not expected to live to the age of 60, men can now expect to live to 78 and women to over 80.
But the bad news is that more of them will live on in isolation, apart from their families, lonely and fearful that illness will force them to endure an ailing health service.
The same goes for younger citizens. While Ireland in the past may have been poor, it at least had social cohesion, bolstered by large extended families and tight-knit communities.
That is now largely gone and there are a growing number of people living alone. The number of lone parents with young children has risen by a startling 80% in the past decade.
The CSO figures show that between 1998 and 2004, Ireland outperformed the rest of the EU in terms of income, employment growth and public finances.
But they also show how our social welfare system is failing to combat poverty.
In 2004, Ireland had the second-highest GDP per person in the EU. And, while the unemployment rate in Ireland increased slightly from a low point of 3.6% in 2001 to 4.2% in 2005, it is still the lowest rate in the EU in 2005.
However, spending on the health services is still substantially below the EU average and inflation in Ireland has been consistently higher than the EU average since 1999.
The proportion of Irish people at risk of poverty, after pensions and social transfer payments were taken into account, was 21% in 2004. This was one of the highest rates in the EU.
In 2002, social protection expenditure in Ireland was 15.9% of GDP — the lowest of the EU 15 countries.
There are other woes as well. The cost of living here has risen sharply. In the first half of the 1990s, price levels in Ireland were below the EU 25 average. But by 2004, prices here were over 23% above the EU average and Denmark was the only EU state with higher costs of living.
To the economist, these are figures on a page. To the lone parent minding the euros, they represent the struggle to survive.
