Elaine Byrne has a good post over on PoliticalReform.ie about the recent Transparency International Corruption Perception Index.
Ireland ranked 14th [least corrupt] worldwide.
Elaine Byrne raises some questions about how perception and reality may differ due to the methodology employed. Corruption is inherently an extremely difficult thing to measure. What is corruption? What do the people surveyed perceive as corruption? Yadda yadda yadda.
The reports on individual countries in the International Progress Report are usually more interesting.
FOOTNOTE: Regular readers may (?) be happy to know I managed to avoid being shot by a trench-coated man with a silenced pistol as I casually walked through the dark rain-soaked city today. Always a positive, that.
… Or maybe it’s not the ‘Real Mark Coughlan’ typing this and I just want you to think I’ve not been assasinated?
Okay, I’ll stop now.
also out today
IRELAND’S BLASPHEMY law has caused it to fall from joint first to 10th place in the 2010 Reporters Sans Frontières Press Freedom Index.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2010/1027/1224282072440.html
never really liked the RSF index,afaik its ranks down for state media monopolies rather then the more common and damaging private media monopolies