Report gives Ireland low ranking in economy, society and environment indicators

There are calls for the progress of the country to be measured by people's well-being as well as economic growth.

A new index out today measures wealth and development against environmental and social factors to see how healthy Ireland is as a whole.

It shows that Ireland is performing in the bottom half of 15 similar European countries.

The report highlights Ireland’s particularly poor performance on low pay, long-term unemployment, household debt, and GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions.

Seán Healy of Social Justice Ireland said: “There are positives in this report, such as Ireland making the top third of rankings in quality education.

"However, our particularly bad performance on Environment and inequalities emphasises the need for these Sustainable Development Goals to become an integrated part of policy formation across the board.”

Dr Catherine Kavanagh of UCC said: “It is broadly accepted that if we were to cut down forests for economic growth without replanting in a sustainable manner, we would be hit twice as hard down the line on both environment and economy.

"We need to start looking at short term economic policies that damage families and promote inequality in the same way. They are simply unsustainable.”

Seán Healy said it is important to take the blinkers off.

He said: "If we confine ourselves too much to measuring our economic growth and don't take enough notice of services, infrastructure and well-being that people experience in their daily lives, then we will have a very imbalanced situation where our economy may be doing very well, but in fact people's situation and experience won't be as good as that at all."