On 7 October 2009 the National Economic and Social Council (NESC) launched a report Well-being matters: a social report for Ireland.1 Speaking at the launch NESC director Dr Rory O’Donnell called for a broader understanding of social progress than simply measuring GDP. The report tracks trends across six aspects of people’s lives: their economic resources, their work and education, their relationships and care, their community and environment, their health, and societal values. Alcohol consumption is included as an indicator of health, together with four other behavioural components – smoking, physical exercise, eating and weight.

The report’s author, Helen Johnston, notes that health behaviours are influenced by a wide range of socio-economic and cultural factors. Some sub-groups of the population are more at risk of poor health than others and have less access to treatments and services. These sub-groups include people with lower educational levels or lower incomes, or who are unskilled. In addition, Johnston cites a recent study2 which ‘shows that “inequality seems to make countries socially dysfunctional across a wide range of outcomes” in that “rich” countries with a highly unequal income distribution are more likely to have lower levels of trust, higher levels of mental illness (including drug and alcohol addiction), lower life expectancy and higher infant mortality, higher levels of obesity, poorer educational performance, more teenage births, more homicides, higher imprisonment rates and more limited social mobility’ (Johnston 2009: 76).