Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I do not think we have got started on that aspect yet, but it is in the programme for Government. It is something that the Government and all three parties in government are committing to doing, because we need an accurate way to measure well-being in our society that is about more than GDP and about more than trolley numbers. We need something more sophisticated than any of those metrics. Regarding looking to other countries, New Zealand has done some good work in this area and our new Governor of the Central Bank of Ireland was the man involved with those well-being indices and budgets in New Zealand, so perhaps that is one country we can look to.

We should not forget, however, that some well-being indices already exist. For example, the United Nations Development Programme produces a human development index, HDI, every year. That looks at health through life expectancy, educational attainment and economics, and that index ranks Ireland as the fourth-best country in the world in which to live. Deputies would be forgiven for not believing that, but it is the truth.

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