A report on economic competitiveness has placed Ireland bottom of a list of 139 countries worldwide for the state of its banks.

The Global Competitiveness Report is compiled by the World Economic Forum after a survey of businesses in each country, and covers a range of factors affecting each country's business climate.

Overall, Ireland has fallen four places to 29th in the 2010-11 report, dragged down by low rankings in the financial markets category.

In the 'soundness of banks' rankings, Ireland is last, behind even Iceland and Greece, while Ireland ranks only 117th for ease of access to loans.

Access to loans was rated as the biggest problem for doing business in the Irish survey.

