A report released today shows significant differences in living standards for children in Ireland compared to many other European Union countries.
The Counting our Childrenreport, compiled by the Children's Research Centre (CRC) at Trinity College, Dublin shows Irish children receive around one year's less schooling than the OECD norm.
One in eight Irish boys aged 16 has left school, while government spending on pre-schooling is negligible and way below the EU average.
It shows Ireland's children are more likely to grow up in households without a wage-earner and there are 50,000 children in families on housing waiting lists.
All is not doom and gloom, however. The rate of poverty among children has fallen in the last decade, and Irish children score highly in the happiness stakes.
Irish children's literacy is also fifth best in the developed world.
The report was funded by the Irish Youth Foundation and published by the CRC. The CRC, which was established in 1995, is a joint initiative of the Department of Psychology and the Department of Social Studies at TCD.
It conducts research on children, the family, the community and other contexts in which children and young people live their lives.
The CRC says that official data is still unavailable on how many children stop their education after primary school or how many children have an educational disability and whether they are getting appropriate services.
"If we want to know whether policies are working, if we want to identify where the gaps are, we need the data which can tell us that," said the report's author, Ms Eithne Fitzgerald.
Trinity College Dublin, shows that Irish children receive an average one year's less lifetime education than the OECD norm.