Sir, – Once again the highly distorted nature of Irish national economic accounts has misled the people of Ireland. The report was that Ireland was ranked second in the world for quality of life on the UN Human Development Index (News, December 18th).
Ireland was behind only Norway and ahead of Germany, Sweden Australia and well ahead of the UK in 13th place. Ireland was around average for richer economies on two of the constituent measures – life expectancy and years of schooling – but ahead of the pack on the third – gross national income (GNI) per capita.
GNI per capita is commonly used as a measure of living standards but in Ireland is greatly exaggerated by the inflow of profits of multinational corporations to take advantage of Ireland’s controversial tax haven status.
To see how large the distortion is, Ireland comes out at 60 per cent higher than the UK on this measure.
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Anyone who believes that living standards in Ireland are 60 per cent higher than in the UK will believe anything. – Yours, etc,
Dr GRAHAM GUDGIN,
Centre for Business
Research,
University
of Cambridge, UK.