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Is Ireland really top of the charts?
By McGreevy
The Economist magazine is having a laugh. A couple of weeks ago it announced that Ireland was the best country in the world in which to live.
The announcement came on one of those dirty days peculiar to Ireland — a cold, windy, wet, November affair where you think it is going to rain forever.
Even if Ireland was a social utopia, even if all its citizens were prosperous and content, its health and education systems second to none, its community and family life safe and secure, the weather would suffice to give us all a reality check.
Ireland might have a shot at being the best country in the world if you could put a roof over it, a patio heater around it and a solarium to compensate for the 50 days a year the sun doesn’t shine.
No country where it rains half the days of the year and drizzles the other, where you know the seasons by the temperature of the rain, is the best country in the world unless the worst resembles one of Dante’s seven circles of hell.
The top five aside from Ireland are Norway, Canada, Switzerland and Sweden. What have these countries got in common except reputations for being cold and stultifyingly dull?
Ireland, though, is in good company as the so-called best country in the world in which to live.
Norway, a former winner, resides in semi-darkness half the year; Canada is another bone-chilling country with a reputation for well, nothing, actually. “Canada,” as Al Capone once said, “what street is it on?”
In sixth place is Australia —the best country I have visited, a sentiment common to many people. They call themselves the “lucky country”. It’s a place where they say you don’t have to be wealthy to be warm.
But why, then, are so many of them over here (in Britain, 29th in the list)? The problem for Australians is they that they think the whole world is happening elsewhere.
If climate was everything, though, why are hot countries almost synonymous with poverty? The Caribbean islands, the Maldives and the Seychelles have a reputation for being paradises on earth — for tourists, that is. Scratch the surface and there is the same poverty and inequality you get in all Third World countries.
The Economist survey deserves a fairer hearing though than it got, particularly in Ireland, where it gave the glass half-empty school of economic prognostication another chance to wither on about everything that is wrong about Ireland.
‘What about house prices, rip-off Ireland, congestion, the gap between rich and poor, people lying on trolleys in A&E and schools without proper facilities?’ went the gloom-mongers.
Bellyaching about the Celtic Tiger has become a national sport in Ireland. It’s like that old curse: be careful what you wish for, you might just get it.
Prosperity is not enough. The country is losing its soul, the gap between the rich and the poor is getting wider, the sense of community is gone or so the conventional wisdom goes, but look at any town or city in Ireland and you see self-confident, prosperous people and communities that are thriving.
The Irish people have never had it so good. Ireland is better off than ever. Those of us who remember the grim 1980s appreciate the good times, as will those with longer memories stretching back to the 1950s.
Irish people are extremely fortunate to live in a stable democracy, where everybody gets educated for free from primary to third level, there is an incorrupt legal system, nobody dies for want of medical care and there is no hunger.
It’s something that all Western democracies share and something that we can so easily take for granted, yet less than half the world’s population resides in a democracy. By international standards, Ireland is a rich country. By its own standards, it’s also a wealthy country.
Ireland has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the world at present. This is a critical factor. France might sound like a great place to live, but more than one in 10 are unemployed and the opportunities for those who are in employment are limited.
Similarly, sunny Spain has its attractions, but it has high rates of unemployment and an average income of half that of Ireland. Ditto Portugal and Greece.
Nowadays, Ireland is a great country in which to live. Living in Ireland is something that those at home take for granted. But, for those of us in exile, Ireland sometimes feels like a party you haven’t been invited to anymore.
Ireland is not perfect, but no place is perfect. Which is why, to paraphrase Voltaire, if there wasn’t a Heaven, somebody would have to invent one.
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