Tim O'Brien,
Regional Development
Correspondent
Dubliners had the highest level of disposable income in 2001, averaging €18,620 per person - making them almost 17 per cent better off than the average person in the State as a whole.
That is according to the Central Statistics Office (CSO), which yesterday released its County Incomes and Regional GDP ( Gross Domestic Product)bulletin for 2001.
Disposable incomes - earnings after income tax and social insurance deductions - were lowest in Co Laois at €13,147, while the midlands region had the lowest disposable income per person for any region - it worked out at 86.3 per cent of the national average.
The figures show that while disposable incomes rose in every county in monetary terms, some increases were below the State average, giving a year-on-year fall in percentage terms.
For example, the average disposable income in Co Clare in 2000 was €13,672 and it rose to €14,502 in 2001.
Compared to the State average, however, disposable income fell from 94.4 per cent of average in 2000 to 90.9 per cent in 2001.
In this way Clare had the worst performance in 2001, falling 3.5 points on the CSO's scale of national disposable incomes.
According to the index, the most prosperous counties after Dublin were: Kildare, where disposable income was 105 per cent of average; Limerick at 102.5 per cent; Galway, 98.7 per cent; Sligo, 98.4 per cent; Louth, 98.3 per cent; Cork, 97.3 per cent; and Wicklow, 97.2 per cent.
After the midlands, regions which fared badly were the south-east, where disposable incomes were 87.7 per cent of average in 2001, a drop of 1.3 points from 2000.
Set against this index of average disposable incomes, Carlow fell from 86.9 to 84.7 per cent; Kilkenny fell 1.6 points to 86.7 per cent; south Tipperary fell 0.2 per cent to 84.9; Waterford fell 2.3 points to 95 per cent; and Wexford fell 0.5 points to 85.2 per cent.
At the lower end of the scale there were 13 counties with disposable incomes per person below 90 per cent of the State average.
Yesterday's bulletin also measured the value added to goods and services by region, indicating that growth was fastest in percentage terms in the Border Midlands and Western (BMW) region.
Of Gross Value Added (GVA) worth over €103 billion, 19.8 per cent was contributed by the region, an increase from 19.2 per cent in the previous year.
By comparison the Dublin region contributed 80.8 per cent of the State's output in 2000, which fell to 80.2 per cent in 2001.
GVA in the BMW region grew from €17,493 million in 2000 to €20,407million in 2001.
In terms of wage bills, the total compensation of employees was highest in Dublin at €17,404 million in 2001, compared to €232 million in Co Leitrim which has the State's lowest wage bill.
Leitrim also had the lowest per county income from self-employment at €83 million.