UN:Ireland's United Nations diplomats have one of the lowest parking ticket violations of any UN country operating in New York, a study by two US academics has found.
The research found a strong link between a country's corruption record and the likelihood that its UN representatives will use their diplomatic immunity status to rack up parking violations in New York.
The research, by Raymond Fisman and Edward Miguel, economists at Columbia University and the University of California, respectively, found that Ireland's diplomats ranked 137th out of 146 countries, with an average annual rate of zero parking tickets for 10 diplomats between 1997 and 2002.
The worst offenders were from Middle Eastern and Africa countries.
Kuwait clocked 262.2 violations a year, followed by 139 violations for Egypt, 124 for Chad and 119 for Sudan.
The worst European offenders were Bulgaria with 117 and Albania with 84, both of which also ranked high for political corruption on the Transparency International corruption index, the index used by the researchers to measure the corruption rates of individual countries.
"Ireland does very well out of this," said Prof Miguel yesterday. "It has one more diplomat than Kuwait but has a much, much better parking record."
Damien Coyle, a spokesman for the Irish mission to the United Nations, said that Irish diplomats paid their own fines if they were given a ticket and did not try to load tickets on to the Irish taxpayer.