Ireland has "poor health status relative to the EU", the Department of Health and Children's deputy chief medical officer, Dr Eibhlin Connolly, told last week's Cabinet meeting.
Revealing the results of new research comparing Irish and EU life expectancy, Dr Connolly explained that although Irish life expectancy has increased over the last 30 years, the gap between Ireland and the EU has been widening. Irish men are dying more than a year earlier than the EU average, and Irish women more than two years earlier.
In 1970, Irish male life expectancy at birth was 68.8 years, nearly five months higher than the EU average of 68.4 years. However, by 1997, although the Irish figure had risen by 4 1/2 years to 73.4 years, average life expectancy in the EU had outstripped Ireland, rising by over six years to 74.6 years.
The gap for female life expectancy is even greater. In 1970, Irish female life expectancy at birth was 73.5 years, over a year lower than the EU average of 74.7 years. But by 1997, although Irish female life expectancy had risen by just over five years to 78.6 years, the improvement in life expectancy in the EU outstripped Ireland, rising by more than six years to 80.9 years.
Coincidentally, these were years in which many EU states invested heavily in health services, whereas in Ireland health services were cut back from the 1980s onwards.
Dr Connolly outlined how Ireland had "particular problems with cancer and cardiovascular disease". Mortality rates in Ireland from heart disease and cancer had consistently exceeded the EU average over the last 20 years. The Irish death rate from suicide and self-injury also now exceeded the EU average.
Dr Connolly said that prevention of ill health was a multi-sectoral issue requiring particular attention to the problems of cancer and cardiovascular disease. But she added that health inequalities - the differing health experience of different socio-economic groups - were also of particular importance, as were continuing problems with children's lifestyle.
She referred to a study of health behaviour in all 26 European countries which found 69 per cent of Irish 16-year-olds reported having been drunk in the last 12 months, compared to 52 per cent in all the countries surveyed.