Having books at home is among the best predictors of how an Irish teenager will do at school, the OECD report finds.
Along with pupils in other countries, Irish students who read a lot and have books widely available to them perform strongly in school, says the report, entitled Knowledge and Skills for Life.
"Attitudes towards reading" and "books in the home" were the two factors most likely to contribute to high scores among students in reading.
These were even bigger factors than the socio-economic background of the parents.
Having books at home was also the biggest influence on performance in maths among Irish students, followed by the socio-economic background of parents. In relation to science it was also important.
The survey found in the Republic and in other industrialised states that, while students from wealthier families did better than poorer ones, this factor was less important than whether students' homes had items of "classical culture" in them such as literature and works of art.
The survey says: "While possession of such advantages is related to other home background characteristics, its effects in isolation remain consistently strong."
Also important was social and cultural communication between parents and their children.
The OECD said parents who discussed films, books, theatre and music with their children on a regular basis and ate meals with them most days scored highly in the survey.
In all countries, girls are on average better readers than males and consequently do better in English and in literacy tests generally, says the survey.
Even when boys do read they still are outperformed by girls, it adds.
This may be because boys read more comics, newspapers and web pages, whereas females read more novels, it says.
One of the most alarming findings in the survey was also the poor performance of 15-year-olds from single-parent families.
It says that in Ireland performance was reduced by 11.4 points if the student was from a single-parent family.
However, the Republic possesses far fewer pupils from single-parent backgrounds, whereas Britain and the United States had a substantial number of such family structures.
While the results for reading and literacy were good, the Irish summary cautions that there is still a cause for concern.
About 11 per cent of Irish students had poor literacy skills, lower than the OECD average.