Ireland 'bottom of league' in wealth-sharing

Ireland is "bottom of the league" in Europe when it comes to giving workers a share of national wealth, Prof Kathleen Lynch of UCD's Equality Studies Centre told a conference on equality yesterday.

She said the share of national wealth going to workers had been falling at a higher rate in Ireland than in the EU generally since the early 1990s.

"We have in Ireland significantly lower returns in wages to the rest of Europe. We are at the bottom of the league in terms of the more developed western states. Only the poorer EU states compensate employees at an equivalent rate," she said. "So I ask you, where is the rest of the money going? We are being told it's in social expenditure, but I would beg to differ."

She said Sweden spent almost 50 per cent of its GDP on social expenditure, compared with just 15.9 per cent in Ireland.

Twelve years ago, Ireland had been spending 19.7 per cent of GDP on such measures.

"We do not redistribute wealth as we claim to do it, neither into wages nor through social expenditure or health or education."

Prof Lynch was speaking at a conference on equality and inclusion organised by Pobal, which manages a number of social programmes on behalf of the Government and the EU.

Prof Lynch said Ireland was spending 7.5 per cent of GDP on health, compared with 10.4 per cent in France or 8.7 per cent on average in the EU.

"Our expenditure on health in 1987 is roughly comparable to what it is now, despite the increase in population since then," she said. "And what we have in addition is an increased privatisation of healthcare and building of for-profit hospitals and nursing homes."

She said research had shown that for-profit healthcare would not deliver good-quality services to everybody, "and it will deliver poor-quality services to the care of older and vulnerable people because quite frankly the profit nexus will always dictate the principles of care".

Prof Lynch said Ireland was spending just over half the amount of GDP on education that countries such as Denmark spent.

There was a lack of national data on the educational attainment of minority or disadvantaged groups "because people don't want to know", she said.

© 2007 The Irish Times

This article appears in the print edition of the Irish Times