Ireland has been ranked the world’s 12th most prosperous country, according to the Legatum Prosperity Index.

The study views prosperity as a mix of wealth and well-being. Ireland has stayed near the top of this list all the way through the recession, never dropping lower than 12th place and constantly outperforming both Germany and the UK.

Nordic countries dominate the top of the study's list with Norway in 1st place and Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Iceland all in the top eleven.

Ireland scores high on social capital, education, health, security and personal freedom. Irish people are trusting - 96 percent believe that they can rely on others in times of need while 84.4 percent believe that Ireland is a good place to live for migrants.

The country’s poorest section is economic performance. Only 10.2 percent of Irish people think that now is a good time to find a job. Confidence in the government is also low at 26.9 percent.

The UK is 13th, one place behind Ireland. While our neighbours scored well on entrepreneurship they rated poorly on economic performance.

In 14th place are the Germans, they rate well on health but returned disappointing results on safety and security.

While the media is fond of survey statistics, the performance of Ukraine should raise some eyebrows. The country has gone up one place, moving from 62nd to 63rd, this is in spite of the fact that 2014 has seen the president flee the country and a quasi-civil war break out. Their ranking is presumably due to the fact that the study is based on data from 2013.

Finally, Central African Republic is ranked in bottom place. The survey finds that the African country is the worse place in the world for entrepreneurship but it also finds that 38.3 per cent of respondents think that it is a good time to find a job there – that's nearly four times the corresponding figure for Ireland.