While the United Nations Human Development Report can contribute to our knowledge of human development and poverty issues globally, the data used in relation to Ireland, and the weightings applied to these data in the composite calculation of poverty, do not accurately reflect the results of other research conducted in relation to poverty levels in Ireland.
The weightings ascribed in the calculation, by the UN, of its human poverty index place a particular emphasis on functional illiteracy scores drawn from the international adult literacy survey, IALS. In this regard, a report on the results of the IALS from the Department of Education and Science stated that interpretation of these results as revealing a high level of illiteracy in the Irish population is unwarranted.