Ireland's GDP per capita

stagnated at around 60 per cent of the EU average from 1960 onwards, finally passing 70 per cent of the average in 1990 and then rushing to exceed the EU average by 1999. Health spending per capita stood at nearly 84 per cent of the EU average in 1960. But it had plummeted to 54 per cent by 1989. Only in the 1990s did it slowly grow back to reach 80 per cent of the EU average in 1998. To achieve this, public spending on health more than doubled in per capita terms between 1990 and 1999, increasing at twice the rate of the EU average. These increases were necessary just to get to where we were, relative to the rest of Europe, in 1960.