A chara, - Your headline of September 8th, "Ireland ranked as second wealthiest country" was misleading, given that the supporting evidence is that we have "a GDP per head of $37,738".
In the very first place, GDP or Gross Domestic Product, does not measure a country's wealth, but rather its income. The two concepts, though correlated, are not always the same. Germany, for instance, has struggled with zero and indeed negative income growth in recent years, but it is still a wealthy country.
Ireland is the reverse, and it will take many years of high income growth for us to catch up with our Teutonic partners, both in terms of private wealth holdings and the stock of public capital.
Secondly, it is virtually universally accepted that Gross National Product (GNP), not GDP, is the better measure of how well the Irish economy is doing. This is because national product takes into account the repatriation of profits from foreign capital employed in Ireland, a substantial portion of production value in the economy. But such factor incomes clearly do not enrich either Ireland or the Irish people. In fact GNP in Ireland in 2003 was 22.7 billion (16 per cent) less than GDP.
Another, potentially very serious problem with using these conclusions to produce such lavish headlines is our measure of the population. In the last census period, reported population growth was just under half a million, or 12.5 per cent, but it is widely suspected that true population growth is greater still, and there may be as many as 200,000 new residents in greater metro Dublin not accounted for in the "per capita" statistics that make us look so rich. And as any Junior Cert student knows, dividing a fraction by a bigger denominator makes the number smaller.
These are uniquely Irish issues, and the UN can be excused for not drawing attention to them in its publication of summary statistics. The same cannot be said for your report. - Is mise,
GRAHAM STULL, Mourne Abbey, Clonskeagh, Dublin 14.