one factor to include in your comparison is that ireland
has a large gap betwen gdp and gnp - about 10% the
last time i heard. this is due the large amount of repatriated
multinational profits which are included in calculations for
gdp. in most countries, it balances out because repatriated
profits leaving the country are approximately matched with
profits returning to the country. our gdp figure gives an
inflated sense of the income in the country so generally you
should add 10% to these "percentage of gdp" figures to
get an accurate picture of how we spend our income.
Basically GDP is income, GNP is wealth. As other posters have pointed out for Ireland GDP exceeds DNP because of the effects of inward investment. Therefore, GNP data represents a more accurate measure of living standards in Ireland. According to various sources Ireland's GNP is about 21% lower than its GDP which is why Ireland is still a relatively less wealthy country. But GNP is the figure in which you should be interested. For example contributions to the national pensions reserve find are based on GNP and not GDP. Basing them on GDP would be crazy as it’s not really ‘our’ money. So they question should be what % of GNP is public expenditure in Ireland? You can check out this NESC publication [broken link removed] but it appears that public expenditure in 1999 as a % of GNP was 36.5%.
It would be interesting to see those percentages regarding public sector WAGES instead of public sector spending per se, as a percentage of GDP/GNP in Ireland and abroad. The choice of the Irish I believe was to increase spend on wages and not on capital, and thus our schools and hospitals and roads are not in the best nick.
The multi-seat STV system we have here means no politician will stand up to the public sector unions, and say "ENOUGH". The result is that additional public spending just ends up lining the pockets of dour civil servants, while our public services decay !