Ireland has the highest level of poverty in the Western world outside the US, according to a United Nations report published today.
Irish society is also one of the most unequal among Western countries, the Human Development report from the UN Development Programme finds. The richest 10 per cent of the Irish population is 11 times wealthier than the poorest 10 per cent.
This is in spite of the fact that Ireland ranks as the fourth-richest country in the world, with a per-capita gross national product (GNP) exceeded only by Luxembourg, the US and Norway.
However, the Government said the findings on poverty in the UNDP report were based on out-of-date statistics.
The Minister of State for Development Co-operation, Mr Tom Kitt, pointed out that the data used to compile the poverty figures were up to five years old.
Ireland ranks 18th out of 173 countries on the report's main measure of quality of life, the Human Development Index. This is the same as last year.
For the second year Norway heads the index, followed by Sweden, Canada and Belgium. Niger and Sierre Leone are ranked worst, and the bottom 27 countries are in Africa. The index is a composite measure of economic wealth, education and life expectancy.
Speaking at the Dublin publication of the report, Mr Kitt said significant progress had been made in tackling poverty in the past five years.
Child poverty had been halved, and the numbers in consistent poverty had fallen significantly. He expected this would be reflected in new figures to be published shortly.
A UNDP representative, Ms Sally Fegan Wyles, said people should be careful not to read too much into the figures. They were "not a good tool" to track recent events.
According to the report, 15.3 per cent of Irish people are living in poverty. The US, with 15.8 per cent, has the worst score among the 17 Western nations surveyed. Sweden, Norway and Netherlands have the lowest poverty levels, and the UK ranks 15th.
Ireland's poor showing is largely due to low literacy figures. Almost 23 per cent of the population is functionally illiterate, meaning they have difficulty performing simple tasks like reading a bus timetable. However, Government officials pointed out that these data were gathered in 1998, and new data were due shortly.
They also point out that Ireland's long-term unemployment has fallen since a figure of 5.6 per cent was attained in 1999.
The average Irish GDP per person in 2000 was $29,866, only $50 less than Norway's. Only Luxembourg and the US had higher incomes. However, Irish GDP figures are artificially inflated by the earnings of multinationals based here.
The report shows that in eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union as well as two dozen African nations people were poorer and died sooner than at the end of the Cold War.
Some 51 countries, with 40 per cent of the world's people, are on track to achieving universal primary education by 2015 or have done so already.
