Survey Fever: Ireland is wonderful, expensive, optimistic, pessimistic, lazy and hard-working. It's been a year of surveys. Here are a few things we learned.
Ireland is the world's third most vulnerable country to computer virus attacks. On average, women earn one-fifth less than men. Irish men die five years younger than women.
Irish teenagers register the highest level of binge-drinking in Europe and are almost twice as likely to have smoked marijuana than their European neighbours. Seventy per cent of us believe obesity is a major problem but, given an extra hour in the day, 32 per cent would watch television or sleep rather than exercise.
More than a quarter of our children are overweight.
We believe the judiciary and politicians to be the most corrupt people in the land and, for all the tribunals, one in five of us believes that corruption will get worse over the next three years.
Nevertheless, on one international corruption index we're a little less corrupt than Chile, but a smidgen more crooked than Belgium.
Eighty per cent of rural dwellers and farmers like life in the countryside, which is good because city life got bad press this year. On one hand we have the fourth-highest income per head of population in the world, and we're only the ninth most expensive in terms of cost of employment out of 19 EU countries. But Dubliners need the high wages because their city is the fourth most expensive in Europe, and the 14th dearest on the planet. A cup of coffee is three times more expensive in our capital than it is in Buenos Aires, although almost half what it is in Tokyo.
It doesn't stop us from spending, though: 30 per cent say they will have spent more this Christmas than last. Besides, almost half of Irish employees feel their jobs will be very secure in 2005, the highest score in Europe. We're hard workers too: we take less than half the sick days the Germans do.
Nevertheless, the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) didn't see a "rip-off Ireland", saying Dublin is only the 18th most expensive country in Europe. The EIU, though, likes Ireland. Last month it told us that this is the best country in the world to live in. So what about the rain and the gender inequality? Our strong community values, low divorce rates and political freedoms make this a gold-tinted emerald.
There was no survey to tell us just how cynical Irish people were about that.
Shane Hegarty