A few weeks ago, I was at a lecture in London. The venue and the speaker are not the issue. The point was in what was said: I was taken aback when one of the guests got up and said, quite categorically, that on a list of world countries on the UN Development Index, Ireland was placed in joint-sixth – I came back and checked to find he was correct.

There are 188 countries on the UN list where this index of general human welfare and development has been measured on transparent, objective criteria.

The criteria used are life expectancy, education, income per head and a new measure added is the level of inequality in the society.

These however are touchy areas. It is easy to become mesmerised by stories about the victims, about where the system fails some people and some groups – but in my view, we can become so victim-centred that we overlook the enormous progress that has been made in the country over the last number of years.

Where to start

I am not sure where people want to start from: is it the foundation of the new state in 1921 or the Whitaker Lemass economic revolution as well as free secondary education in the 1960’s or EU entry in 1973 or the wave of multinational investment that followed EU accession and the acceptance of political stability, together with limited accountability.

Nevertheless, we all now view Charlie Haughey with mixed emotions. He may not have gone to prison for his misdeeds, but in the eyes of a thinking public, his standing has been hugely diminished and likewise with many of those at the centre of the financial collapse.

Very high standards

People similarly may talk about the gaps in our social welfare system, but the plain facts are that our general old age pension and unemployment payments are, by international standards, very high. Similarly with our education system.

The countries ahead of us on the overall international UN list are Norway, Australia, Switzerland, Denmark and The Netherlands.

We are level with Germany but behind us are the US, Canada, Singapore, Sweden, the UK and the rest of the world.

As we have seen in the UK referendum on EU membership, people tend to vote against something rather than for anything in particular.

I have no doubt that in a similar referendum here, the motion to remain in the European Union would be carried overwhelmingly, but the UK case was always different.

The national story has been one of comparative decline over the last century and it is clear that most of the older generation wanted things to return as they imagined they were when they voted.

This simplistic approach was accentuated by the vast bulk of the media that was utterly biased against everything the EU attempted or stood for but, getting back to Ireland’s position in the world, my attendance at the London lecture forced me to assess where we were as a country and where we had come from.

Looking at it objectively, farming has probably been the sector that has struggled most to keep comparative pace with the improvements in the rest of society as the real purchasing power of the products we produce has so steadily fallen.

The need to run faster to stand still has never been so apparent as in recent years – but that should not blind us to the overall Irish story.