Ireland is among the European Union member-states with the greatest gap between rich and poor, according to figures published yesterday by the EU, writes Honor Mahony in Brussels.
The top 20 per cent of Ireland's highest earners receive 4.5 times more than the bottom 20 per cent.
This gap remains despite Ireland's economic and wealth success story as a member of the European Union. Wages are now 121 per cent of the EU average.
However, Mr Brian Nolan of the Economic and Social Research Institute said the situation was unlikely to change unless Ireland moved away from the Anglo-Saxon or free-market social model practised in Britain and the US.
"We have always been in a grouping of countries which belong together in terms of income inequality," said Mr Nolan. He added that, although "it may have got a bit more unequal", there had always been a big gap between rich and poor in Ireland.
Changing Ireland's social model would require a whole new way of thinking and would not happen overnight.
Among the "old" member-states, only Greece, Portugal, Spain and Britain have a greater gap between rich and poor. In the much poorer central and eastern European new member- states, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia have a higher poverty gap than Ireland, while Poland and Malta have the same.
In the Nordic countries, which have a much stronger welfare state with high personal tax and high levels of employment, the gap between rich and poor is much less.
The Danes have the smallest poverty gap, with the top earners getting 3.1 times more than the bottom earners.
The report also says that more than a fifth of Irish citizens are "at risk of poverty", which it defines as earning less than 60 per cent of the national average.
The figures also show that Ireland is among the countries which spend the least on labour market policy such as job-training, integration of the disabled and start-up incentives.
While countries such as Belgium and Denmark spend 3 per cent of GDP on these activities, Ireland belongs to a group of six countries that all spend less than 2 per cent.
The Nordic countries developed their social model over the decades following the second World War; the very generous social welfare system depended on having the highest possible number of people in work in order to pay for it.
Backing this up was a rigorous system of training people if they became unemployed so that they could easily find a new job.
"We don't have as rigorous a training system as we should," said Mr Nolan.
"Those countries do a much better job of catching people in the social welfare net."
The report, entitled The Social Situation in the European Union, also looks at a variety of other social factors, including the relationship between men and women.
The figures show that the representation of women in Irish politics is low compared with several other member-states.