Irish prices are the second-highest in Europe, figures reveal
Irish consumers pay the second-highest prices in Europe, according to new data released by the Central Statistics Office (CSO).
Only consumers in Denmark have to fork out more when it comes to consumer goods, according to the 'Measuring Ireland's Progress 2018' report.
The report paints a picture of Ireland and its changing trends based on 59 indicators, including education, health, the economy and social trends. These are compared against rates in other EU countries and, in many cases, against previous rates in Ireland to determine the extent of changes over time.
It revealed that Irish shoppers spend 27.3% more than the EU average and prices here have increased by 0.8% since 2014, the second-lowest rate of increase in the EU.
The Irish economy grew faster than the rest of the EU and even when the output of multinationals is stripped out, the productivity of the Irish workforce is almost 20% higher than the EU average.
In Ireland, 9.4% of people aged 18-59 live in jobless households. This is higher than the EU average of 9% but represents a significant drop from 15.7% in 2012.
The report looks at a broad range of elements in Irish society.
For instance, in terms of education, Ireland is top of the pile when it comes to the number of maths, science and technology graduates. The rate was 32.7% per 1,000 people aged 20-29. This group also showed the widest gender disparity, though, with more than twice as many males as females.
The rate of people aged 18-24 who weren't in employment, training or education was 12.6%, lower than the EU average rate of 13.7%.
It shows that Ireland still has the highest proportion of young people in Europe and second-lowest proportion of people over 65.
But that is changing and the report notes that the number of over-65s here grew by almost 40% or just over 197,000 in the past decade.
Male life expectancy at birth in Ireland was 80.4 years, while female life expectancy was 3.6 years higher at 84.0 years. Both Italy and Sweden had the highest life expectancy for males at 80.8 years, while Spain had the highest for females at 86.1 years.
Public health spending per capita, in constant 2017 prices, increased from €2,870 to €3,232 between 2007 and 2017 in Ireland, an increase of 12.6%.
In terms of the environment, municipal waste volumes dropped by 18.5% between 2007 and 2017, falling from 3.40 to 2.77 million tonnes. Over the same time period, the amount of waste recovered rose from 34.1% to 75.9% of total waste generated.
In 2017, Ireland’s net greenhouse gas emissions fell below the limit in the Kyoto Protocol by 0.1%.
Ireland had 444 passenger cars per 1,000 inhabitants in 2017, the seventh-lowest ratio in the EU28.
The average age of first-time mothers in Ireland was 30.3 years old, above the EU28 of 29.1 years.
The divorce rate in Ireland is the lowest in the EU, at 0.7 per 1,000.
