Ireland ranked 11th of EU-15 countries in Sustainable Progress Index

Ireland is making poor progress when ranked against the other 14 countries in the EU-15.  The new Sustainable Progress Index, published by Social Justice Ireland to mark UN World Social Justice Day, February 20, 2017, shows the scale of the challenge facing Ireland under the headings of economy, society and environment.

This new study shows that of the EU-15 countries, Ireland is ranked last on its performance on the environment; 10^th on performance on the economy and 9^th on its performance on society. Overall it is ranked 11th of the 15 countries studied. These results show that despite huge austerity, rapidly growing GDP and improving employment statistics, Ireland has a long way to go before it reaches the level of development and fairness to which most Irish people aspire.

This index has been developed to show how Ireland is currently performing on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. These 17 goals were divided into three sub-groups – economy, society and environment. The indicators were compared to the other 14 countries in the EU-15 to see how the situation had changed over the past decade and to see how Ireland is performing currently.  Under all three headings Ireland’s ranking is worse now than it was in 2006.

On the economy Ireland has slipped from 6^th in 2006 to 10^th in 2014, the latest year for which data is available, despite an excellent performance in GDP growth.  On the environment, Ireland fell from 14^th to 15^th over the decade.  Measuring its progress as a society Ireland fell from 7^th to 9^th position.  These rankings go some way towards understanding why many Irish people don’t believe there has been sufficient real progress in recent years.

The researchers who conducted this study, Professor Charles Clark, St John's University, New York and Dr Catherine Kavanagh from UCC, argue that their results strongly suggest that focusing exclusively on GDP as a measure of progress is clearly misleading. 

Despite the recovery of recent years and the dramatic rise in Ireland’s GDP when it comes to measuring real, sustainable progress, Ireland is not performing anywhere close to what is required or is possible.

The full text of the study is available here.