IRELAND IS NOT as ‘good’ as it used to be, it seems.
The latest ‘Good Country Index’ has seen Ireland fall from first place to 11th over the last two years.
The index is concerned with ranking the countries that contribute most to the rest of the planet relative to GDP.
Ireland was top of the pile in 2014 but Sweden has now taken Ireland’s place at the top of the league. Scandinavian neighbour Denmark comes in second place while the Netherlands, the UK, and Germany round off the top five.
Ireland still ranks relatively highly in the list of 163 nations with Libya propping up the table.
The index does not take domestic factors into account but, as author Simon Anholt explain, it’s about contributing to the “common good” worldwide.
The Good Country Index isn’t trying to make any moral judgments: it just measures, as objectively as possible, what each country contributes to the common good, and what it takes away, relative to its size.
“We’ve found that the importance of this is something most people in most cultures can agree on,” he adds.
The index measures each country’s contribution in seven different areas with Ireland not making the top 15 in any of these individual metrics. Ireland performed best in the ‘planet and climate’ section, coming in 13th place, and worst in terms of ‘International Peace & Security’ where Ireland ranked 51st.
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