The Irish ranking (joint 11th) is somewhat unbelievable as well. We're only a couple months from a controversy in which the PM admitted receiving significant "personal gifts" from property developers and other assorted big business types, who incidentally have done extremely well under his government. He came out of it more or less unscathed but a number of ministers/representatives from the same party have been less lucky. Many of us believe that the reason Ahern survived is that people are so used to the endemic corruption in his party that his own takings seem relatively insignificant. In fact his poll numbers went up during the "scandal". These Gallup findings seems to reflect the fact not that Ireland is less corrupt, but that the people don't really care that it's corrupt.