Ireland’s unlikely golden era of health, wealth and prosperity

Despite housing and health and climate crises, our experience living and working in Ireland has never been so good, writes Cormac Lucey

Come election time, the positions political parties advocate for can generally be classified into either continuity or change. 

With a general election looming in the Republic no later than March 2025, the battlelines are already emerging. The parties of the outgoing Government will campaign for continuity. The parties of the opposition will seek change. 

Ironically, despite the Government’s many policy failures (housing, health, etc.), it has a strong story to tell. 

If a person were to choose when they would live in Ireland over the last thousand years, the rational choice would be today. 

Life expectancy

Take the very simplest index of national well-being. The average life expectancy in 1950 in the Republic of Ireland was 60. Today, it is just under 83 years old. This staggering progress reflects healthier lifestyles, better diets, safer workplaces and improved healthcare. 

Income

Income levels today are far ahead of those our parents and grandparents could aspire to. Last year, Ireland’s modified gross national income (the measure of national income designed to exclude globalisation effects) was €273.1 billion. This equates to income per head of €54,600. 

The key to this is productivity growth. If productivity output per person grows at a rate of two percent per annum – the general experience over the 20th century – people should be 7.2 times as well off after a century. 

If annual productivity growth is just one percent – roughly what we’ve experienced since the millennium – people will be just 2.7 times as well off after a hundred years. It is the slowdown in underlying productivity growth which is the most serious economic issue facing the global economy today.

Employment

We must also consider the range and depth of job opportunities available today.
When I graduated from university in 1981, many of my classmates had to emigrate as the economic conditions were so poor in Ireland. Today, Ireland has record low unemployment. Young people travel the world for fun and to expand their horizons rather than out of financial necessity. 

Ireland’s successful policy of attracting foreign direct investment to these shores means that people can work for the world’s largest and most financially successful companies without leaving the country. 

Climate

Young people may argue that, by presiding over damaging climate change, older generations have eaten the seed corn they will need. 

A 2021 global survey led by the University of Bath in the UK illustrated the depth of anxiety many young people feel about climate change. Close to 60 percent of the young people approached said they felt very worried or extremely worried. Three-quarters said they thought the future was frightening. Fifty-six percent said they believe humanity is doomed.

These widely held viewpoints illustrate the degree of public hysteria surrounding the debate over climate change. 

Bjorn Lomborg (The Copenhagen Consensus Center, Copenhagen Business School and the Hoover Institution, Stanford University) recently made the point in Science Direct that scenarios set out under the UN Climate Panel (IPCC) show human welfare “will likely increase to 450 percent of today’s welfare over the 21st century. Climate damages will reduce this welfare increase to 434 percent”. 

Lomborg expects that, in the context of general human progress, climate change will represent a speed bump rather than the end of the road. 

To quote the former British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, we’ve “never had it so good”. 

Cormac Lucey is an economic commentator and lecturer at Chartered Accountants Ireland

*Disclaimer: The views expressed in this column published in the October/November issue of Accountancy Ireland are the author’s own. The views of contributors to Accountancy Ireland may differ from official Institute policies and do not reflect the views of Chartered Accountants Ireland, its Council, its committees, or the editor.