IRELAND ranks 21st in the world in a survey published yesterday which measures "economic freedom from government intervention" in 115 countries.

In Ireland the Economic Freedom of the World Annual Report 1997 was published by The Edmund Burke Institute. Associated institutes in 47 countries published the report simultaneously.

The report presents data which it says supports the argument that "economically free nations grow faster and achieve higher standards of living than less free nations".

The top three countries in the survey are Hong Kong, Singapore and the US. The survey relates to 1995.

The level of economic freedom of a country is measured according to issues to do with money and inflation, government operations and regulations, taxation ("freedom to keep what you earn) and restraints on international exchange.

The report states that the result for Ireland might be misleading and "too rosy". Internationally traded services and domestic manufacturing companies are treated with "more freedom" than other sectors of the economy and this may have distorted the overall picture.

"It is clear that most people in Ireland do not experience quite the level of economic freedom indicated in the survey," said Mr Paul Mac Donnell. a marketing consultant and director of the Edmund Burke Institute.

"If the indigenous economy is allowed the same freedom as the international services and manufacturing side, we will see a corresponding increase in prosperity," said economist Mr Moore McDowell, who is also a director.

The report states that Ireland "desperately" needs to revise its social welfare system and deregulate its labour market. The level of unemployment here reflects "transfer payments that reduce the cost of joblessness and/or regulations that make it expensive to hire and terminate employees."

The Edmund Burke Institute, which is privately-funded, "believes that Ireland's political, academic, and cultural leaders have failed to draw the natural conclusions, from the collapse of state socialism and the growth of free-market ideas across the world," according to the report.

Mr MacDonnell said there is a "tradition of hostility to the free market in Ireland" and this attitude has been taken up by the church and the political parties.

Mr McDowell said it was also the case, however, that there were individual politicians in all parties, from Democratic Left to the Progressive Democrats, "who could sit here and have no difficulty with what we are saying."

Commenting on the position of Singapore on the "economic freedom" table, he said it was his belief that "in the long run" countries which repressed political freedom could not have a successful market economy.

The Edmund Burke Institute is associated with the Cato Institute, in the US, the Institute of Economic Affairs, in Britain, and the Fraser Institute, in Canada.