Ireland's health system is among the top 20 in the world, according to a league table published by the World Health Organisation (WHO).
The French system tops the list with Ireland in 19th place, just below the UK.
The World Health Report 2000 also finds that the way Irish people pay for their health services, mainly through taxes and health insurance, is among the fairest in the world and it places Ireland sixth overall in this regard. The report surveyed 191 countries.
It strongly supports the system of community rating in health insurance which applies in Ireland, in which all members pay the same premium.
A community rating system means that those who are healthy subsidise those who are ill.
It helped to push Ireland up the league table. In other categories, Ireland comes out less well.
In patient satisfaction, Ireland is placed 25th. This measures the extent to which people feel they are treated with respect by the health services, how promptly they get attention, and the quality of basic amenities.
Patient satisfaction in the UK ranks just below that in Ireland. The United States tops the category, even though its system of paying for health services is seen by the WHO as unfair.
The report points out that patient satisfaction depends on the resources a health system enjoys, and the US spends more of its gross domestic product (GDP) on health than any other country.
Ireland spends 6.2 per cent of GDP on health compared with 9.8 per cent for France, 7.1 per cent for Japan, 5.8 per cent for the UK and 13.7 per cent for the US.
To measure the effectiveness of health services in purely health terms, the WHO estimated how many years of full health people could expect to enjoy in the countries surveyed.
In Ireland, people can expect 69.6 years of full health at birth, 27th position in the world.
The greatest number of years of full health in the world can be expected by newborns in Japan (74.5 years), followed by Australia (73.2) and France (73.1).
Irish women can expect a longer span both of full health and of disability than men.
At birth, an Irish female can expect to enjoy 71.7 years of full health (males 67.5) and to endure 6.6 years of disability (males 5.8).
Introducing the report, the WHO director-general, Dr Gro Harlem Brundtland, points out that performance can vary considerably between countries with roughly the same level of health spending.
Even in countries with good general health, the report says, the health of poorer people can be relatively low.
Ultimate responsibility for the performance of a country's health system lies with the government, Dr Brundtland writes.
"Dollar for dollar spent on health, many countries are falling short of their performance potential. The result is a large number of preventable deaths and lives stunted by disability. The impact of this failure is borne disproportionately by the poor."
Health systems are not just concerned with improving people's health but with protecting them against the financial cost of illness, she writes.
She is critical of departments of health which focus on public health services, leaving private health services to their own devices.
Governments must harness the energies of the private and voluntary sectors as well, she says.
Weblink: http://who.int/whr/ (World Health Organisation)