Ireland's GDP per capita - a measure of a nation's wealth - was the fourth highest in the EU in 2011, latest figures from Eurostat show.

The figure for Ireland was 127pc, just under Austria at 129pc, Netherlands at 131pc and Luxembourg at 274pc where the average for the EU27 was 100pc and the average for the eurozone was 108pc.

Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita is expressed in Purchasing Power Standards (PPS) and it varied from 45pc to 274pc of the EU27 average across the 27 Member States.

Finland, Belgium and Germany were between 15pc and 20pc above the average, while France and the United Kingdom were between 5pc and 10pc above. In Italy and Spain, GDP per capita was around the EU27 average.

Cyprus was around 10pc below the EU27 average, while Slovenia, Malta, Greece, the Czech Republic and Portugal were between 15pc and 25pc lower, and Slovakia was around 25pc below. Estonia, Hungary, Poland and Lithuania were between 30pc and 40pc lower than the average, while Latvia was around 40pc below, Romania around 50pc below and Bulgaria 55pc below.

While GDP per capita is often used as an indicator of countries' level of welfare, it is not the only such indicator. An alternative welfare indicator, better adapted to reflect the situation of households, is Actual Individual Consumption (AIC) per capita.

Generally, levels of AIC per capita are more homogeneous than those of GDP but still there are substantial differences between the Member States. In 2011, AIC per capita expressed in PPS ranged between 44pc of the EU average in Bulgaria to 150pc in Luxembourg while Ireland came in at 100pc, behind Italy at 102pc and the UK at 112pc.