Dublin Earns Top Marks

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Dublin Earns Top Marks

April 9, 2008

By Paddy Clancy

FORGET the decline of the Celtic Tiger economy. Dublin is still the best city in which to live and work in Europe.

That’s according to a report from the University of Glasgow published this week in a new European journal Urban Research and Practice. It surveyed 150 of the largest cities in Europe.

The study by Professor Ivan Turok and Dr. Vlad Mykhnenko shows that Dubliners enjoy higher salaries and better employment prospects than almost anywhere else in Europe. The city has grown more strongly since 1995, on a combined index of employment, average incomes and productivity, than most other European cities. It was Europe’s “most dynamic” city.

The report showed that in the 10 years to 2005 income per capita in Dublin more than doubled. The average income in 1995 was $37,820. It rose to $80,440 in 2005. This compares with $58,880 in Stockholm, the next highest ranked country.

In the same period employment rose by more than 50%, making Dublin the third-ranked city in Europe for job creation.

It’s population increased by 10% and more money was spent in the shops. Dubliners ranked only 28th in the European Union retail spending league in 1995. By 2005 they were the 10th highest spenders.

Rising prosperity went hand-in-hand with one of the fastest rates of population growth. The report deemed Dublin’s all-round performance over the last two decades as “exceptional.”

Most of the other strong-performing cities were in Scandinavia, Helsinki, Tampere and Turku in Finland, and Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmo in Sweden.

At the other end of the table Germany, despite being the most prosperous country in Europe in the early 1990s, had many of the most sluggish cities during the decade under review for the study.

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