Measuring progress - Ireland is EU’s poor little rich country

IT appears to be an elementary contradiction that, in one of the wealthiest countries in Europe, with its second-best economy, one-fifth of the population are at risk from poverty.

Yet, that is the unpalatable truth as revealed in a report from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) called Measuring Ireland’s Progress 2005, which is a major review of how Ireland fared over the past decade.

It does, indeed, illustrate a remarkable progress for the country, and, especially, in the years from 1996 to 2005, when Ireland outperformed the rest of the European Union in relation to income, employment and its public finances.