Ireland's poverty level is rated second-worst in industrialised world

Ireland has the highest levels of poverty in the industrialised world outside the USA, according to a report from the United Nations published today.

For the second year in a row, the Human Development Report ranks Ireland 16th out of 17 Western countries, with 15.3 per cent of the population living in "human poverty".

For the first time in many years, Ireland has fallen in the main ranking of social progress used in the report prepared by the UN Development Programme.

Ireland now ranks 20th of the 174 states surveyed in the Human Development Index (HDI), down from 17th last year.

The UNDP says the fall derives from new ways of calculating data, as well as changes in some of Ireland's figures for educational enrolment.

The results show that while Ireland remains one of the most desirable places to live in the world, there are still massive inequalities in the distribution of wealth.

While the survey is based on statistics compiled several years ago, there is no evidence that the current boom is diminishing these inequalities.

HDI is a widely accepted measure of the quality of life which takes account of income levels, life expectancy and education. For the sixth year in succession, Canada topped the index, followed by Norway and the US. The finding that large concentrations of poverty persist within the "Celtic Tiger" economy is likely to prove highly embarrassing to the Government.

When similar results emerged from last year's reports, officials sought urgent meetings with the UNDP to ascertain whether the Irish statistics used in the report were accurate and up to date.

The UNDP measures "human poverty" by looking at the figures for life expectancy after 60, illiteracy, poverty and long-term unemployment. The US tops the index with 16.5 per cent in poverty, followed by Ireland at 15.3 per cent and the UK at 15.1 per cent. In contrast, 7 per cent of Sweden's population is in poverty.

Ireland's bad showing in this index can be largely attributed to high figures for functional illiteracy. Almost 23 per cent of Irish people are functionally illiterate, meaning that they have difficulty performing basic tasks such as reading a bill or following instructions on a medicine bottle.

Ireland also has one of the highest rates of long-term unemployment, at 7.1 per cent. Only Spain and Italy are higher. And about 10 per cent of the Irish population will not survive into their 60s.

Ireland is the only state for which no figures indicating the distribution of wealth are provided. The UK emerges as the most unequal of societies, with the wealth of the richest 20 per cent almost 10 times that of the poorest 20 per cent.

The report singles out Ireland's computer industry as an example of how a country can open a "fast track" to knowledge-based growth. It also cited this State's national partnership agreements as a model for other countries seeking consensus-led development.

In the plethora of statistics contained in the report, it also emerges that Ireland has the lowest murder rate among Western countries, and the lowest rate of recorded rapes.