The economic policies promoted by the Tánaiste, Ms Harney, were causing premature deaths, increased ill-health, violence and social breakdown, a leading Irish-based economist has claimed.
Mr Richard Douthwaite, editor of a report titled Growth - The Celtic Cancer, said that economic growth had created an "increasingly sick" society and maintained that the policies of Ms Harney and the Progressive Democrats were responsible for a "sharp deterioration in the country's health over recent years".
Mr Douthwaite was speaking at the publication of the report in Dublin yesterday.
It was ironic, he said, that the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, had made Ms Harney Minister for Health when she had "largely created" the country's health problems.
"Almost all health indicators have worsened in recent years as a result of the drive for growth. We are all more stressed, and some of us have coped with that problem by drinking or eating to excess. Drunkenness, obesity and diabetes have all increased."
The recent Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) report, which found that Ireland had the highest quality of life in the world, had noted Ireland's poor health as a negative factor. However, overall, the analysis in that report was flawed, because it ignored the distribution of income.
"The gap [between rich and poor] in Ireland has widened seriously over the past 10 years . . . Study after study shows that, when people are thrown into relative poverty, as has happened here, their health deteriorates."
The Government had not just allowed the gap to widen, Mr Douthwaite said. It had aggravated the process by keeping wages down under successive national wage agreements to speed economic growth and by giving tax breaks to the wealthy.
Dr Elizabeth Cullen, of the Irish Doctors' Environmental Association, a contributor to the report, said statistics showed that the health of Irish people had deteriorated during the unprecedented economic growth of the 1990s. "Irish mortality rates are now worse than the EU average for almost all diseases, including cancer, heart disease and suicide," she said.
The proportion of babies with low birth weights had risen by 20 per cent from 1993 to 1999. Alcohol consumption over the same period was up 40 per cent, while poverty in old age rose from 2.8 to 18.2 per cent. Average income rose by 73 per cent from 1994 to 2002, but house prices also rose, by 250 per cent nationally.
