The United Nations positioning of Ireland near the bottom of the human poverty index of rich countries is outdated and inaccurate, the Minister for Social and Family Affairs has claimed.
Séamus Brennan yesterday dismissed the figures contained in the UN Development Programme's Human Development Report for 2006, which put Ireland in 17th place in a poverty index of 18 OECD countries.
"It is not an accurate reflection of an Ireland in which more than 250,000 people have been lifted out of poverty in less than a decade," Mr Brennan said. "Other figures distort the reality because of Ireland's exceptional economic performance over several years and the significant progress that has been made in confronting and tackling poverty."
Mr Brennan said he had stressed many times the problems in using the "at risk of poverty" or "relative poverty" measure alone in making comparisons between countries.
"These figures distort the real picture because they are not comparing like with like. Also, the 'at risk of poverty rate' in the UN report is based on data prior to 2002. In less than a decade more than 250,000 people, including 100,000 children, have been lifted out of deprivation and hardship.
"The report fails to reflect the positive impact of increases of over 55 per cent in social welfare payments in the past five years alone and the many other increases and improvements targeted at alleviating poverty."
The human poverty index was compiled by calculating life expectancy, adult literacy, long-term unemployment and risk of poverty.
However, Mr Brennan said literacy figures used by the authors dated from 1995 and did not reflect the current situation.
Such reports could cause confusion and distort real progress, he said, and could be a serious distraction by sending "the wrong signal" to the public and policy makers.
A spokeswoman for the Combat Poverty Agency said the report was useful for looking at global poverty. The information on literacy was out of date, she said, and Ireland had recently "done well" on cutting long-term unemployment.
While the agency recognised that people were better off now than they were in the past, there were still some who were struggling, among them lone parents, people with disabilities, children in some larger families and older people.
"Instead of saying that one measure is better than another, we should be looking at policies that are aimed at those at risk," the spokeswoman added.
Frank O'Connell of the UNDP conceded that some countries' performance could be distorted where data was either old or not available.
"Obviously, if this were taken into account, Ireland's performance in the index would be even better, but . . . if we were to do this for every country then many other countries would also be moving up in the index, so it may not make a difference to Ireland's relative performance," he said.