Policy Analysis in Ireland

INTERNATIONAL LIBRARY OF POLICY ANALYSIS
SERIES EDITORS:
IRIS GEVA-MAY & MICHAEL HOWLETT
POLICY ANALYSIS IN
Ireland
Edited by John Hogan and Mary P. Murphy

POLICY ANALYSIS
IN IRELAND
International Library of
Policy Analysis
Series editors: Iris Geva-May, Simon Fraser University,
Canada, Carleton University, Canada and the Wagner
School, NYU, USA and Michael Howlett, Simon Fraser
University, Canada
This major series brings together for the first time a detailed
examination of the theory and practice of policy analysis systems
at different levels of government and by non-governmental actors
in a specific country. It therefore provides a key addition to
research and teaching in comparative policy analysis and policy
studies more generally.
Each volume includes a history of the country’s policy analysis

which offers a broad comparative overview with other countries as
well as the country in question. In doing so, the books in the series
provide the data and empirical case studies essential for instruction
and for further research in the area. They also include expert analysis
of different approaches to policy analysis and an assessment of their
evolution and operation.
Volumes in the series include the following countries:

Australia • Brazil • Czech Republic • France • Germany • Japan •
Israel • The Netherlands • Turkey • Ireland • Spain • Mexico •
Taiwan • USA • Canada • Belgium
and build into an essential library of key reference works. The series
will be of interest to academics and students in public policy, public
administration and management, comparative politics and government,
public organisations and individual policy areas. It will also interest
people working in the countries in question and internationally.
In association with the ICPA-Forum and the Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis.
See more at comparativepolicy.org/about-jcpa-icpa-forum/ or at policy.
bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/international-library-of-policy-analysis.
POLICY ANALYSIS
IN IRELAND
Edited by John Hogan and Mary P. Murphy
International Library of Policy Analysis, Vol 16

First published in Great Britain in 2021 by
Policy Press, an imprint of
Bristol University Press
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Contents
List of figures, tables and boxes vii

List of abbreviations viii
Notes on contributors xi
Editors’ introduction to the series xv
Acknowledgements xvii
Foreword by Dermot McCarthy xix
Preface xxiii
one Contextualising policy analysis in Ireland 1

John Hogan and Mary P. Murphy
Part One: History, styles and methods of policy analysis in Ireland
two The evolution of economic policy analysis in Ireland 19

Clare O’Mahony
three The evolution of social policy analysis in Ireland: from a theocentric 33
to an econocentric paradigm?
Fiona Dukelow
four The changing policy analysis capacity of the Irish state 47
Muiris MacCarthaigh
five Introducing evidence into policy making in Ireland 63
Frances Ruane
Part Two: Policy analysis at various levels of government: from local to the EU
six Ireland’s ‘unique blend’: local government and policy analysis 79

Aodh Quinlivan
seven Committees and the legislature 93
Bernadette Connaughton
eight Policy analysis in the civil service 107
Richard Boyle and Joanna O’Riordan
nine Europeanised policy making in Ireland 123
Mary C. Murphy
Part Three: Think tanks, interest groups, political parties and gender-based
policy analysis
ten The social partners and the NESC: from tripartite dialogue via 141
common knowledge events to network knowledge
Rory O’Donnell
v
Policy analysis in Ireland
eleven Thinks tanks and their role in policy making in Ireland 157
Chris McInerney
twelve Civil society organisations and policy analysis 171
Mary P. Murphy and Orla O’Connor
thirteen Political parties and the policy process 187
Maura Adshead and Diarmuid Scully
fourteen Gender expertise and policy analysis 203
Pauline Cullen
Part Four: The public, science and the media: the wider policy analysis
environment in Ireland
fifteen Democratic innovations and policy analysis: climate policy and 219
Ireland’s Citizens’ Assembly (2016–18)
Clodagh Harris
sixteen Irish science policy: a case study in evidence-based policy design 235
for small open economies
Eoin Cullina, Jason Harold and John McHale
seventeen Media discourses on the economy in Ireland: framing the 249
policy possibilities
Brendan K. O’Rourke
Index 263
vi
List of figures, tables and boxes
Figures
4.1 Percentage of civil servants at higher grade (from Assistant Principal) 53
4.2 Public organisations in Ireland, 1922–2015 54
12.1 Policy analysis capacity continuum 173
13.1 A simplified model of the policy process 187
13.2 Legislative activity of Dáil Éireann, 2004–18 195
16.1 Irish government budget allocations for R&D in current prices, 236
€ millions (2007–18)
Tables
6.1 Callanan ‘justification of local government’ framework, 2018 80
8.1 Organisation Capability Review methodology 114
11.1 Think tanks in the EU relative to share of EU GDP and R&D intensity 164
11.2 Think tanks operating in/from Ireland 165
15.1 The Irish CA’s recommendations on tackling climate change 225
Boxes
6.1 Examples of policy innovation 89
10.1 The developmental welfare state 146
10.2 Climate change policy: getting the process right 150
13.1 Agenda setting: the fluidity of local/national politics in health care 189
13.2 Policy evaluation: the constraints to committees 197
16.1 Teagasc: Agriculture and Food Development Authority 242
17.1 Challenges to participation: the case of budgetary policy 253
vii
List of abbreviations
CA Citizens’ Assembly
C&AG Comptroller and Auditor General
CC Constitutional Convention
CCBS Centre for Cross Border Studies
CCC Cork City Council
CPA Combat Poverty Agency
CRA Charities Regulatory Authority
CSO Central Statistics Office
CSAP Civil Service Action Plan
CSEU Civil Service Evaluation Unit
CRE Comprehensive Review of Expenditure
CVP Community and Voluntary Pillar
DBEI Department of Business, Enterprise and Innovation
DEASP Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection
DPER Department of Public Expenditure and Reform
DTTS Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport
DV Domestic violence
EAPN European Anti-Poverty Network
EIP Evidence-informed policy
EBP Evidence-based policy
ECB European Central Bank
EEC European Economic Community
EI Enterprise Ireland
ELI Export-led industrialisation
EPP European Poverty Programme
EPTR Export profits tax relief
ESRI Economic and Social Research Institute
ESS European Statistical System
EU European Union
FDI Foreign direct investment
FPA Focused Policy Assessment
GB Gender budgeting
GDPR General Data Protection Regulation
HRB Health Research Board
IBRC Irish Bank Resolution Corporation
ICTU Irish Congress of Trade Unions
IDA Industrial Development Authority
IFAC Irish Fiscal Advisory Council
IGEES Irish Government Economic and Evaluation Service
IHREC Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission
IIEA Institute of International and European Affairs
viii
List of abbreviations
ILO International Labour Organization

IMF International Monetary Fund
IPA Institute of Public Administration
IPHI Institute of Public Health in Ireland
IRC Irish Research Council
ISI Import substitution industrialisation
ISS Irish Statistical System
ISSDA Irish Social Science Data Archive
JOCCA Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action
JPC Joint Policing Committee
LAS Legislative Analysis Service
LCDC Local Community Development Committee
LEO Local enterprise office
LRC Law Reform Commission
NAPP National Action Plan against Poverty
NCPP National Centre for Partnership and Performance
NERI Nevin Economic Research Institute
NESC National Economic and Social Council
NESF National Economic and Social Forum
NGO Non-governmental organisation
NIEC National Industrial Economic Council
NP New politics
NPM New public management
NSB National Statistics Board
OCR Organisational Capability Review
OECD Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
OEEC Organisation for European Economic Co-operation
PAC Public Accounts Committee (formally Committee of
Public Accounts)
PBO Parliamentary Budget Office
PLS Pre-legislative scrutiny
PMB Private Members’ Bill
POS Political opportunity structure
PPN Public Participation Network
PR Proportional representation
RIA Regulatory impact analysis
SAEI Small Advanced Economies Initiative
SFI Science Foundation Ireland
SIPO Standards in Public Office Commission
SJI Social Justice Ireland
SMI Strategic Management Initiative
SOE Small open economy
SoSP Science of Science Policy
SP Social partnership
ix
SPC Strategic Policy Committee

SPS Senior Public Service
STEM Science, technology, engineering and mathematics
STV Single transferable vote
TASC Think Tank for Action on Social Change
TD Teachtaí Dála – a member of the Dáil Éireann, the lower
house of the Oireachtas (the Irish parliament)
TILDA The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing
VFMPR Value for Money and Policy Review
VAW Violence against Women
UN United Nations
x
Notes on contributors
Maura Adshead is Associate Professor of Politics and Public Administration

and Head of Engagement at the University of Limerick, Ireland. She is a former
President of the Political Studies Association of Ireland and a regular political
commentator in Ireland and internationally. She has authored, co-authored
and edited a number of books and articles on Irish politics and public policy,
Europeanisation impacts in Ireland and community-engaged research.
Richard Boyle is Head of Research at the Institute of Public Administration

in Ireland, where he has worked since 1986. He has researched and written
extensively on evaluation and public service reform. He has worked with Irish
central and local government, the European Commission, the Organisation for
Economic Co-operation and Development, and the World Bank. He is a former
board member of the European Evaluation Society and a founder member of
the Irish Evaluation Network.
Bernadette Connaughton is a Lecturer in Public Administration at the

Department of Politics and Public Administration, University of Limerick.
Her main research interests include Europeanisation, public policy process (in
particular environmental policy) and relationships between ministers, senior civil
servants and political advisers. She has published on those topics in journals
including Irish Political Studies, Public Administration and Regional and Federal Studies.
Pauline Cullen is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology and Politics at Maynooth

University, Ireland. Her research includes analysis of civil society and gender
equality at national and European Union (EU) level, women’s movements and
gender and political representation. She is co-editor of Producing Knowledge,
Reproducing Gender: Power, Production and Practice in Contemporary Ireland (University
College Dublin Press, 2020) and has published in the Journal of Civil Society; Social
Movement Studies; Gender, Work & Organization; Politics & Gender; and Policy &
Society.
Eoin Cullina is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Whitaker Institute for

Innovation and Societal Change at the National University of Ireland Galway,
having previously completed his PhD research with Lero, the Science Foundation
Ireland Research Centre for Software.
Fiona Dukelow is a Senior Lecturer in Social Policy at University College

Cork, Ireland. Her research interests include critical welfare theory and various
aspects of historical and contemporary Irish social policy. She is co-author, with
Mairéad Considine, of Irish Social Policy: A Critical Introduction (Policy Press, 2017)
xi
and co-editor, with Mary P. Murphy, of The Irish Welfare State in the Twenty-First
Century: Challenges and Change (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).
Jason Harold is a Lecturer in Economics at the J.E. Cairnes School of Business

and Economics at the National University of Ireland Galway. He has previously
held positions as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at both the Whitaker Institute
for Innovation and Societal Change at the National University of Ireland Galway
and at the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI).
Clodagh Harris is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Government and

Politics and the Environmental Research Institute, University College Cork
and an expert on democratic innovations. She has served on, or advised on,
Ireland’s first Citizens’ Assembly We the Citizens (2011), the G1000 Belgian
Citizens’ Summit (2011), Ireland’s Constitutional Convention (2012–14), the
Citizens’ Assembly on Brexit (2017), Extinction Rebellion UK’s working group
on citizens’ assemblies (2019), and the Research Advisory Group to the Scottish
Citizens’ Assembly (2019–20).
John Hogan is a Senior Research Fellow and Lecturer at the College of

Business, Technological University Dublin, Ireland. Widely published, he has also
edited several volumes, including Policy Paradigms in Theory and Practice (Palgrave
Macmillan, 2015) with Michael Howlett. A former Chair of the Midwest Political
Science Association’s Comparative Policy Section, he has mainly researched the
nature of policy change and global lobbying regulations. He has advised the Irish
government, and several other European governments, on lobbying regulations.
Muiris MacCarthaigh is Associate Professor of Politics and Public

Administration at Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland. His research
engages with concerns within and between political science and public sector
governance, and has been published in Governance; Public Administration; Public
Administration Review; Public Management Review; Public Policy and Administration;
and the Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis. He is a former President of the
Political Studies Association of Ireland, and currently a member of the European
Group for Public Administration’s Steering Committee.
John McHale is Established Professor of Economics and Executive Dean of

the College of Business, Public Policy and Law at the National University of
Ireland Galway. He served as Chair of the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council from its
inception in 2011 to 2016. He has previously held positions as Assistant Professor
of Economics and Associate Professor of Economics at Harvard University in the
US, and as Associate Professor of Managerial Economics at Queen’s University,
Ontario, Canada.
xii
Notes on contributors
Chris McInerney is a Lecturer in Politics and Public Administration at the

University of Limerick. He currently teaches undergraduate courses on public
administration as well as graduate classes on collaborative governance. His main
research interests lie in the areas of democratic participation, state–civil society
relationships and role of public administration in promoting social justice. He has
also worked in a number of Irish and international development organisations,
including the United Nations Development Programme.
Mary C. Murphy holds a Jean Monnet Chair in European Integration and is

a Senior Lecturer in Politics in the Department of Government and Politics,
University College Cork. She researches the relationship between Ireland/
Northern Ireland and the EU, and has published extensively on the subject. Mary
is the President of the Irish Association for Contemporary European Studies
and is currently working on a three-year project, funded by the Economic and
Social Research Council, examining Brexit and its constitutional implications
for Ireland.
Mary P. Murphy is a Professor in Irish Politics and Society in the Department

of Sociology, Maynooth University. She has published widely, including (co-
edited with Fiona Dukelow) The Irish Welfare State in the Twenty-First Century:
Challenges and Change (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). An active advocate for social
justice and gender equality, she has been a member of numerous national policy
bodies and in 2019 was appointed by Michael Higgins, the President of Ireland,
to the Council of State.
Orla O’Connor is Director of the National Women’s Council of Ireland,

the leading national women’s membership organisation in Ireland, with over
190 member groups. She is a former Co-Director of Together for Yes, the
national civil society campaign to remove the Eighth Amendment’s constitutional
ban on abortion in Ireland. For her role in Together for Yes, she was recognised
as one of the 100 Most Influential People by TIME magazine in 2019.
Rory O’Donnell is a Research Fellow at the Geary Institute and an Adjunct

Professor in the School of Social Policy at University College Dublin (UCD),
Ireland. He worked as economist and later as Director of Ireland’s National
Economic and Social Council for various periods from 1987 to 2019. He was
formerly Jean Monnet Professor of European Business at UCD.
Clare O’Mahony lectures in economics and data analysis at Technological

University Dublin and is programme chair for the BSc in Economics and Finance
there. Her work has been published in a number of journals including The World
Economy and Irish Economic and Social History. Her research interests are in foreign
direct investment, international trade, economic development and the interface
xiii
between business and government policy. She holds a PhD from Trinity College,
Dublin.
Joanna O’Riordan has almost 20 years’ experience as a researcher at the

Institute of Public Administration (IPA). She carries out research and consultancy
work in the area of public management, with a particular focus on reform and
modernisation in relation to human resource management. She presents her
research findings and teaches on various IPA programmes. She is also the editor
of Administration, the journal of the IPA.
Brendan K. O’Rourke works at the Technological University Dublin, where

he focuses on learning in the area of discourses of the economy, and in particular
examining enterprise policy and public discourses on the economy. His scholarly
work has been widely published as chapters in edited volumes, encyclopaedia/
handbook entries and in over 20 peer-reviewed academic journals such as the
Critical Discourse Studies, Politics and Social Semiotics.
Aodh Quinlivan worked at Cork County Council from 1994 to 2000, while
pursuing his PhD on a part-time basis. He has lectured at University College
Cork since 2000 where he is the Director of the BSc Government degree
programme and the MSc Government programme. His main research interests are
in the areas of local government and public sector management. He is a leading
specialist on local government and has published widely in this area.
Frances Ruane served as Director of the ESRI from 2006 to 2015, having
previously taught in the Department of Economics at Trinity College, Dublin.
She is a member of the Royal Irish Academy and is currently Chair of the
National Competitiveness Council and a member of the Board of the European
Statistics Governance Advisory Board. Her research interests are in economic
development and policy, foreign direct investment and trade.
Diarmuid Scully completed his PhD in the causes and consequences of political
dynasties in developed democratic states in the Department of Politics and Public
Administration at the University of Limerick, where he currently lectures on
Irish politics and European studies. An elected member and previously Mayor
of Limerick City Council, he is a former Chair of the City Development Board
and Economic Development Strategic Policy Committee, and a member of the
Mid-West Regional Authority.
xiv
Editors’ introduction to the series
Professor Iris Geva-May and Professor Michael Howlett, ILPA series editors
Policy analysis is a relatively new area of social scientific inquiry, owing its origins
to developments in the US in the early 1960s. Its main rationale is systematic,
evidence-based, transparent, efficient, and implementable policymaking. This
component of policymaking is deemed key in democratic structures allowing
for accountable public policies. From the US, policy analysis has spread to other
countries, notably in Europe in the 1980s and 1990s and in Asia in the 1990s
and 2000s. It has taken, respectively one to two more decades for programmes of
public policy to be established in these regions preparing cadres for policy analysis
as a profession. However, this movement has been accompanied by variations
in the kinds of analysis undertaken as US-inspired analytical and evaluative
techniques have been adapted to local traditions and circumstances, and new
techniques shaped in these settings.
In the late 1990s this led to the development of the field of comparative policy
analysis, pioneered by Iris Geva-May, who initiated and founded the Journal of
Comparative Policy Analysis, and whose mission has been advanced with the
support of editorial board members such as Laurence E. Lynn Jr., first co-editor,
Peter deLeon, Duncan McRae, David Weimer, Beryl Radin, Frans van Nispen,
Yukio Adachi, Claudia Scott, Allan Maslove and others in the US and elsewhere.
While current studies have underlined differences and similarities in national
approaches to policy analysis, the different national regimes which have developed
over the past two to three decades have not been thoroughly explored and
systematically evaluated in their entirety, examining both sub-national and non-
executive governmental organisations as well as the non-governmental sector;
nor have these prior studies allowed for either a longitudinal or a latitudinal
comparison of similar policy analysis perceptions, applications, and themes across
countries and time periods.
The International Library for Policy Analysis (ILPA) series fills this gap in the
literature and empirics of the subject. It features edited volumes created by experts
in each country, which inventory and analyse their respective policy analysis
systems. To a certain extent the series replicates the template of Policy Analysis
in Canada edited by Dobuzinskis, Howlett and Laycock (Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 2007).
Each ILPA volume surveys the state of the art of policy analysis in governmental
and non-governmental organisations in each country using the common template
derived from the Canadian collection in order to provide for each volume in the
series comparability in terms of coverage and approach.
Each volume addresses questions such as: What do policy analysts do? What
techniques and approaches do they use? What is their influence on policymaking
in that country? Is there a policy analysis deficit? What norms the work done by
xv
policy analysts working in different institutional settings? Contributors focus on

the sociology of policy analysis, demonstrating how analysts working in different
organisations tend to have different interests and to utilise different techniques.
The central theme of each volume includes historical works on the origins of
policy analysis in the jurisdiction concerned, and then proceeds to investigate
the nature and types, and quality, of policy analysis conducted by governments
(including different levels and orders of government). It then moves on to
examine the nature and kinds of policy analytical work and practices found in
non-governmental actors such as think tanks, interest groups, business, labour,
media, political parties, non-profits and others.
Each volume in the series aims to compare and analyse the significance of the
different styles and approaches found in each country and organisation studied,
and to understand the impact these differences have on the policy process.
Together, the volumes included in the ILPA series serve to provide the basic
data and empirical case studies required for an international dialogue in the area of
policy analysis, and an eye-opener on the nuances of policy analysis applications
and implications in national and international jurisdictions. Each volume in the
series is leading edge and has the promise to dominate its field and the textbook
market for policy analysis in the country concerned, as well as being of broad
comparative interest to markets in other countries.
The ILPA is published in association with the International Comparative Policy
Analysis Forum, and the Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis, whose mission is
to advance international comparative policy analytic studies. The editors of each
volume are leading members of this network and are the best-known scholars
in each respective country, as are the authors contributing to each volume in
their particular domain. The book series as a whole provides learning insights for
instruction and for further research in the area and constitutes a major addition
to research and pedagogy in the field of comparative policy analysis and policy
studies in general.
We welcome to the ILPA series Volume 16, Policy Analysis in Ireland, edited
by John Hogan and Mary P. Murphy, and thank the editors and the authors for
their outstanding contribution to this important encyclopedic database.
Iris Geva-May
Professor of Policy Studies, Baruch College at the City University of New
York, Professor Emerita Simon Fraser University; Founding President and
Editor-in-chief, International Comparative Policy Analysis Forum and
Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis
Michael Howlett
Burnaby Mountain Professor, Department of Political Science, Simon Fraser
University, and Yong Pung How Chair Professor, Lee Kuan Yew School of
Public Policy, National University of Singapore
xvi
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the series editors Michael Howlett and Iris Geva-May
for approaching us with the idea of this volume many, many moons ago, and
for all of their support, guidance and help as the volume came together. We
would like to thank all of the contributing policy analysis scholars for their
chapters, their knowledge, their skills and most of all the time that they gave to
this project. This is their volume, reflecting their contributions and analysis. We
thank Dermot McCarthy for his comprehensive and thoughtful foreword. We
would like to thank our respective heads of school, particularly Katrina Lawlor
and Etain Kidney at Technological University Dublin, and Mary Corcoran and
Sean O’Riain at Maynooth University for their support during the past four
years of working on this project. In particular, we would like to thank Sharon
Feeney, Director of the Business, Society and Sustainability Research Centre at
the College of Business, Technological University Dublin, who made possible,
organised and oversaw our Symposium on Policy Analysis in Ireland in late 2019.
Finally, we would like to thank all at Policy Press for their guidance, support
and advice throughout the process of putting this volume together, a task made
difficult by the Covid-19 pandemic.
xvii
Foreword
Dermot McCarthy
When Tony Blair, after leaving office, was asked what it was like to be Prime
Minister of the UK, he said that “You take decisions, all day.” It is the role of
governments to take key decisions regarding public affairs. Those who elect them
expect, or at least hope, that they will take the right decisions. Governments often
decide matters on the basis of well-flagged intent, set out in their programmes.
More often, they are required to respond to situations and events for which
precedent offers little assistance.
The study of how governments set about making policy decisions, which is
the field of policy analysis, is of great interest: to practitioners, so that they can
improve their art; to those seeking to influence policy on behalf of interests
or causes; and to the wider public, whose wellbeing depends on the quality
of those decisions. The editors of this important book have brought together
a distinguished range of contributors to provide a focus on the organisational
processes, institutions and locations that contribute to the construction and
supply of ideas, as well as methods of policy analysis and evaluation. They have
succeeded admirably in their aim to describe and critique the policy capacity of
the key actors engaged in collective problem solving on behalf of Irish society.
In concise, accessible and comprehensive chapters, the contributors explore
and evaluate the history, styles and methods of policy analysis in Ireland; the
types of policy analysis conducted at different levels of government, from local to
European; those outside government who contribute to policy analysis, including
social partners, think tanks and civil society organisations; and the wider policy
analysis environment in Ireland, including the place of deliberative institutions
and the influence of media discourse.
A number of recurring themes are explored from different perspectives by
the contributors. The search for a model of successful economic modernisation
has framed Irish policy discourse, in earlier years without the benefit of much
analytical capacity and in more recent times shaped by a range of sophisticated
technical analysis, both local and international. National sensitivities have
coloured attitudes towards acceptable sources of expert advice or models to
follow, favouring American over British expertise in the early decades; embracing
British social administration traditions when social policy became more central
to government ambition; and turning to the experience and practice of other
small European countries as the process of Europeanisation developed. The state
played a role in developing an infrastructure for policy analysis to match the
agencies of economic development it had created, such as the Central Statistics
Office (CSO), the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) and the
National Economic and Social Council (NESC). A political culture shaped by
our strongly proportional electoral system favoured cautious centrism on the part
xix
of large political parties, blurred the distinction between the local and national in
major policy debates, and created an openness to deliberative processes outside
the institutions of government tasked with identifying ‘an external consensus’ on
contentious questions that could then be adopted as public policy.
Maura Adshead and Diarmuid Scully observe, in their conclusion to Chapter
Thirteen, that in the Irish political system ‘the emphasis was placed on stability
and capability rather than ideology’ (p 199). In such an environment, one
might have expected a greater blossoming of policy analysis than the record, so
comprehensively reviewed here, reveals. Traditional party loyalties forged in the
struggle for independence are clearly a major explanatory factor, as is the strength
of local issues in Irish electioneering. It may be, also, there has been a belief that
the scope for discretion in Irish policy making is limited to the opportunities
presented by the external environment. Tacking to the international winds,
rather than creating a self-sustaining national system of innovation, has been
the strategic focus of Irish governments, with greater or lesser success. In his
seminal report The Irish Economy in a Comparative Institutional Perspective (NESC,
1992), Lars Mjoset demonstrated how the interaction of economic structure,
demographic dynamics and market opportunities had provided Ireland with
a persistently weak national system of innovation. Perhaps the success of Irish
policy in pursuing growth led by foreign direct investment through the consistent
policy approach described by Rory O’Donnell, as former NESC director, –
combining macroeconomic, distributional and structural policy – has become
an entrenched national system of innovation that shapes and constrains the field
of policy analysis.
The range of issues covered by the contributors is so wide and the historical
perspective so well sketched that readers will have a no difficulty finding topics to
capture their interest. For many, it will revive memories of debates and campaigns
that dominated the policy agenda for a time. I found much to ponder and
very little with which to disagree. Much of the development of policy analysis
described here occurred over the course of my own public service career. Many
of the personalities and issues sketched by the authors stirred recollections. I
remember Séamus Ó Cinnéide’s lectures at the Institute of Public Administration
(IPA) in the early 1970s, emphasising that the way in which policy problems were
defined largely determined the policy response. Tony Coughlan’s social policy
lectures at Trinity College, Dublin (TCD) urged students to always interrogate
policies regarding cui bono (for whose benefit?).
I was a social policy analyst at NESC in the late 1970s and recall working on
reports that were often the first official Irish treatment of policy issues, such as
universality. (I was amused to see Fiona Dukelow cite, in Chapter Three, a report
I drafted for NESC in 1981 on future priorities for social policy!) I chaired the
Irish Bishops’ Council for Social Welfare in the 1980s after its seminal work on
poverty, and I was part of the group that prepared the first Statement on Social
Policy of the Society of St Vincent de Paul (and memorably presented it to then
Taoiseach Charles Haughey). As Director of NESC from 1990 to 1993 and
xx
Foreword
Deputy Chair and Chair from then until 2011, I appreciate the accuracy and
force of Rory O’Donnell’s account of its work (Chapter Ten), which he did so
much to shape. As Secretary General to the Government and of the Department
of the Taoiseach from 2000 to 2011, I had a particular insight into the social
partnership process, the perspective of politicians and officials on the process, and
the Community and Voluntary Pillar in particular, reflected in the policy shifts
described by the authors.
For what it’s worth, the trends and patterns described by the authors, including
factors impinging on policy capacity and analysis, are consistent with my own
recollections and assessment. Perhaps more emphasis might be placed on path
dependency in describing the policy process; often the most significant influence
on a policy decision is the previous decisions on the same topic. I would also
highlight the influence of available institutions and instruments in shaping policy
decisions, such as confidence in the capacity of Revenue Commissioners and lack
of confidence in some other potential channels. I might also have given more
prominence to questions of implementation, especially joining up programmes
with analogous or complementary policy goals. The quality and effectiveness of
policy decisions are almost always dependent on the quality of implementation. In
the same vein, I would highlight the importance of officials, analysts and activists
who have direct experience of the lived experience of those who are the focus
of policy, but who are also fluent in the language of formal policy development,
a rarer combination than might be supposed. Finally, I endorse the authors’
emphasis on the problem-solving character of the policy process, the frequent
dearth of timely information on which to base decisions and the difficulty for
politicians of acknowledging the uncertainty of outcomes as they progress and
defend their decisions.
The authors make clear that, in the words of Rory O’Donnell in Chapter
Ten, ‘the rationalist sequence – involving analysis recommendation–policy
decision–implementation – no longer describes the policy process’ (p 149). Yet
the search for better policy making through better analysis and better evidence
continues even if, as Frances Ruane points out in Chapter Five, the goal is
evidence-informed rather than evidence-based policy making. But what counts
as evidence? In her review of gender expertise and policy analysis, Pauline
Cullen points out in Chapter Fourteen that ‘the types of knowledge that qualify
as expertise, the conditions under which such knowledge has resonance with
policy makers and can claim policy success’ (p 212) are problematic. Brendan
O’Rourke points out in Chapter Seventeen that ‘what evidence counts as good
depends on the assessment of experts, and assessing which experts to trust is no
easy task’ (p 252). Indeed, trust in experts is so low as to challenge the legitimacy
of many established policy routines.
So what is to be done? Despite the challenges and pitfalls, better policy analysis
is undoubtedly a route to better policy. The enhanced analytical capacity of the
civil service and the Oireachtas, the high quality of the data available through
the national statistics system, and the policy focus of think tanks and many civil
xxi
society organisations described by the authors are undoubtedly welcome additions

to the policy process. Yet it is also clear that the culture, institutions and practice
of policy making – on the part of government departments, the Oireachtas, local
authorities and indeed the European Union – and their reflection in media both
old and new are critical to what Mary P. Murphy and Orla O’Connor call, in
Chapter Twelve, the policy opportunity structures that enable policy capacity
to be effective.
How is that combination of capacity and opportunity to be brought about? I
may have a certain bias, but I believe that there is a particular responsibility on the
civil service, as the locus of independent policy advice to government, to foster
a diverse and flourishing network of policy analysis. It is best placed to support,
assist and encourage the diverse strands of analysis because it is uniquely placed
to appreciate what types of decisions will be improved, by what types of analysis.
There are encouraging signs that in its approach to its own strategic development,
the civil service is indeed developing an appetite for just such a role. It will require
the combination of technical proficiency and creativity that Rory O’Donnell
describes as necessary for the policy analysis developed by NESC. I would suggest
that it also requires a willingness to see the civil service as an instrument of social
learning, engaging in ‘collective puzzlement on society’s behalf ’, in the words
of American political scientist Hugh Heclo. In this role, like NESC, it can assist
the policy process by reframing the question, rather than changing the subject.
The editors set themselves the task of shining a light on those who, in turn,
seek to shine a light into the black box of policy making. They have succeeded
admirably, proving the importance of policy analysis as a focus of concern and
providing an assured account of its state of development in Ireland.
xxii
Preface
The chapters set out here constitute the Irish contribution to the International
Library of Policy Analysis series, edited by Michael Howlett and Iris Geva-May,
and published by Policy Press. The volume is thus one star in the vast constellation
being developed by the series editors to enable the comparison of policy analysis
across countries. This book presents the evolution of policy analysis in Ireland
and the cutting edge of policy analysis research in the country at the beginning
of the third decade of the 21st century. The contributors to this volume are the
leading scholars and practitioners of policy analysis in Ireland. The Irish state and
academia came late to policy analysis, but this volume highlights that there has
been significant catch-up, and innovation, over the past four decades.
The template for the volume was established in 2007 by Laurent Dobuzinskis,
Michael Howlett and David Laycock with Policy Analysis in Canada (published
by the University of Toronto Press) and built on by each subsequent volume in
the International Library of Policy Analysis series published by Policy Press. As
such, this volume is structured similarly to its predecessors, and although it is a
country-specific study, the basic data presented here are comparable with those
from other volumes, thus contributing to future comparative policy analysis. It is
our hope that this book will be of interest to practitioners, scholars and anyone
else concerned with the policy-making process in Ireland and its analysis.
John Hogan
Mary P. Murphy
April 2020
xxiii
ONE
Contextualising policy analysis in Ireland

John Hogan and Mary P. Murphy
Introduction
Policy Analysis in Ireland constitutes the Irish element in the ever-expanding
International Library of Policy Analysis series, edited by Michael Howlett and Iris
Geva-May, and published by Policy Press. The volume provides unique insights
into the state of policy analysis in Ireland, a topic that has only recently received
significant attention in this country. It draws together contributions from some of
the leading policy analysis experts, both academics and practitioners, to provide
a multidimensional set of perspectives on how policy analysis has developed to
its current state, almost exactly a century after the country gained independence.
Our aim is to ensure that this volume constitutes a window into the research
frontier of Irish policy analysis.
The chapters examine the range of institutions and actors involved in policy
analysis from across government, the private sector and broader civil society. The
intention is not to critique specific policy outcomes or policy developments;
rather, the book focuses on the organisational processes, institutions and locations
that contribute to the construction and supply of policy ideas as well as methods
of policy analysis and evaluation. The chapters examine the policy capabilities of
the institutions wherein policy development and evaluation is conducted. Overlap
between the chapters allows readers to reflect on how different approaches to
policy analysis share similar key features, including an underlying informality
related to a relatively pragmatic political culture. However, not all of the chapters
agree with each other’s analysis.
In this introductory chapter, as editors, we offer an overview of concepts
and set the scene with a brief summary of the Irish political and economic
context. We then sketch the kinds of policy analysis the volume encompasses,
providing readers with a guide to the wide-ranging and diverse contributions.
Our practitioner authors provide a number of case studies and other examples
of policy analysis from their own experiences, and the academic authors provide
insights into a variety of approaches to the study of policy analysis applied in
Ireland since independence from the British Empire. The chapters are grouped
in four parts as follows:
• the history, styles and methods of policy analysis;

• the variety of policy analysis conducted at various levels of government;
1
• the expanding range of policy analysis advice coming from think tanks, interest
groups, political parties and groups concerned with gender equality;
• policy analysis emanating from the wider policy analysis environment,
encompassing citizens, the scientific community and the media.
All chapters are cross-referenced, but each contribution is self-contained. Readers

can, by examining just one chapter, gain an insight into an aspect of policy
analysis in Ireland, its evolution and current state. In summation, our hope is that
readers find this a useful volume in assisting them gain a more comprehensive
appreciation of policy analysis in Ireland – a sorely under-researched, and until
recently, underappreciated topic. We also hope to encourage readers to investigate
further those aspects of policy analysis that interest them, or that they find useful
in understanding some aspect of policy making, and in so doing push forward
the Irish policy analysis research frontier.
Readers will find that policy analysis in Ireland has been primarily shaped by
economic logic and largely uncritical empirical thinking, making it relatively
one-dimensional. Insufficient social policy capacity has been a persistent feature
of public policy analysis. Institutional advancements made to improve social
policy analysis in the latter parts of the 20th century were subsequently diluted
by 21st-century austerity. Indeed, the impact of many of the 21st-century
institutional and policy governance reforms has been to invest in strengthening
economic policy analysis and to reinforce economistic forms of reliance on
quantitative evidence.
The consequences of a state that has somewhat successfully modernised
its economy while maintaining a weak welfare state are seen most starkly
in two recent events. The 2020 general election, with its focus on housing
and health as proxies for dissatisfaction with a weak welfare state, highlighted
voters’ dissatisfaction with the outcomes of policy and a governance system
characterised by a disjuncture between the elite and the voters. The COVID-19
pandemic subsequently laid bare the underlying fault-lines and inequalities of
the Irish economic and social system, arguably fault-lines that had not been
sufficiently explored or understood in mainstream processes of policy analysis.
Issues such as the gendered and low-paid nature of the essential economy, or
the fragile reality that 70% of crèches and 80% of nursing homes were privately
owned, were exposed. Attempts to respond to the pandemic also demonstrate
the weaknesses of our policy analysis, the lack of core data, the absence of ex-
ante gender proofing of key policy decisions, the exclusion of key actors and
voices, and the paucity of core public services. The post-pandemic challenge for
policy analysis is immense. How to enable policy makers, the political system
and society to assess what is needed to enable Ireland to build its resilience
to future pandemics, to generate sustainable employment, and to tackle the
climate and environmental emergency as well as the challenges of automation
and digital transformations, and age-old questions of gender and class inequality
and racism?
2
This book has a relatively narrow focus on the more formal process of policy
analysis. The remainder of this chapter outlines some key policy analysis concepts,
the Irish context, the structure of the book and the outline of each chapter. We
are mindful, however, that much of the recent change in Irish society has been
led from outside of formal political or policy institutions. Take, for example, the
political vitality generated by the media, academics and activists in aggregating
the evidence that would lead to impactful, historic child abuse reports. This
book does not include analysis of these broader social movements and the actors
who have generated political momentum for social and economic change, and
in so doing, have insisted that alternatives are possible and have generated new
knowledge and perspectives. Often these imagined alternatives are considered
outside the frame of what is considered possible within policy analysis. Indeed,
policy analysts, and related actors and institutions, are often vested interests
and part of the power dynamic that serve to reinforce the status quo. Such
alternatives are increasingly salient and are gaining momentum, thus challenging
policy analysis. Those who work to promote such alternatives can also gain from
this book’s insight into those who broker knowledge production and frame
policy debate.
Some key concepts

We distinguish the study of policy from the study of policy analysis. Policy
generally refers to a set of ideas, or a plan, while analysis we understand as a
process of organised examination of, and judgment about, a topic. Heclo (1974)
was interested in the administrative capacity of the state and non-elected policy
experts as an independent force in social politics and learning, particularly where
uncertainty required the application of intellect to public problems. Greater
understanding of how policy analysis happens shines a light into the black box of
policy making, which Heclo (1974, pp 305–6) described as a form of collective
puzzlement on society’s behalf. This is consistent with Howlett and Ramesh
(2003), who define policy making as a problem-solving activity.
Complexity requires reflexivity and capacity to creatively diagnose problems
and envision policy alternatives as potential solutions. Howlett (2009) understands
policy analysis as processes of applied social and scientific research pursued by
government officials and non-governmental organisations. This is usually directed
at designing, implementing and evaluating existing policies, programmes and
other specific courses of action adopted, or contemplated, by states. The study
of policy analysis is concerned with ‘policy capacity’, ‘the ability to provide
policy analysis and advice, participate effectively and exert influence in policy
development’ (Goodwin and Phillips, 2015, p 249). ‘Policy analytical capacity’
describes the ability of individuals in a policy-relevant organisation to produce
valuable, policy-relevant research and analysis on topics asked of them, or of
their own choosing (Howlett, 2009, pp 162–3). Communication and influence
are part of analysis, hence advocacy skills are also part of policy analysis capacity.
3
Policy analysis traditions, originating in the United States (US), prioritise

rational, quantitative, policy cycle-oriented analysis that privileges economic
cost–benefit analysis and/or the use of randomised controlled trials in evaluation.
However, this is not the case in Ireland where policy analysis has developed
in a more pragmatic fashion. Mindful that in most countries policy analysis
is evolving as a complex process incorporating different methodological and
intellectual approaches, the book encourages a wide variety of approaches to the
study of policy analysis (Head and Crowley, 2015). These include institutionalist
approaches to policy processes, case-study approaches of the different components,
political economy accounts that focus on economic contexts, interpretivist and
experiential studies of policy work, and normative, critical and deliberative
theories of the policy process.
Informing government on policy making is integral to the democratic process
(Chari et al, 2019). Differing histories and political institutions influence how
each country sources and configures advisers and influence in policy formulation.
Countries develop their own unique set of traditions when it comes to the
presence and skills of analysts and advisers, and the techniques used in considering
policy options. In Canada, for example, modern policy analysis emerged after
the Second World War, and was first employed in budgeting defence and urban
development (Dobuzinskis et al, 2007). For a long time, policy analysis in the US
has been a professional career that can be pursued by graduate students (Meltsner,
1979). Internationally, policy analysis has also become, and its adherents have
sought for it to become, more professionalised so as to improve government
policy making and implementation. Ireland is something of a laggard in this
regard, coming late to the profession of policy analysis.
Irish governing context for policy analysis

A key challenge for the authors of this volume is to locate their specific treatment
of policy analysis in the changing Irish institutional and governance context,
to assess whether Ireland has a ‘policy analytic style’ and whether and how this
might be changing. While relevant contexts are discussed in each chapter, the
following overview is offered as a guide to the overall context in which policy
analysis takes place in Ireland.
Ireland is characterised by its post-colonial adoption and adaptation of both the
British Westminster model of prime ministerial-led parliamentary government
associated with centralised executive power and a compliant legislature, and the
Whitehall administrative tradition whereby the civil service is both apolitical and
generalist and dominated by a strong and conservative department of finance.
The Westminster system stresses ‘the importance of retaining at least part of the
traditional political-administrative dichotomy in policy advice in the form of
conventions about civil service neutrality’ (Craft and Howlett, 2013, p 192).
The legislature (Oireachtas) is bi-cameral; the lower house (Dáil Éireann),
with more powerful scrutiny functions, consists of 160 members directly elected
4
from 39 constituencies. The more limited upper house (Seanad Éireann) has
60 members who are indirectly elected or nominated. The Irish model is
institutionally majoritarian, following the Westminster model, but in practice is
increasingly informed by consensus political models and cultures. A distinguishing
feature that sets Ireland apart from its former colonial master is its relatively unique
proportional representation single transferable vote (PR-STV) electoral system,
which infused electoral politics with intra-party competition that promoted
service over policy and a form of clientelism, or micro-populism, leading to a
relatively anti-intellectual political culture (Kirby and Murphy, 2011).
The focus on executive power in the Westminister model means policy
analysis revolves around government rather than parliamentary cycles. Non-
partisan and professional public service institutions serve governing parties and
executives, which traditionally limited competing advice in parliament. This
means the relatively small local media had an enhanced role in policy discourse
and has proved itself influential in generating both policy knowledge and social
change. Power in the unitary state was highly centralised with little regional
governance and local institutions that equated more to local administration than
to local government. This subnational government, among the weakest in the
European Union (EU) 27 member states, has had a lasting impact on local policy
analysis capacity. Size is a relatively important determinant in the welfare of
countries. Ireland, as a relatively small state, may have underdeveloped innovation,
administrative and policy analysis capacities, and was also relatively slow to
recognise the merits of learning from other small states. A relatively insular and
homogenous society until the mid-20th century, Ireland thereafter reoriented as
a small open economy (SOE), but remained relatively mono-cultural until the
1990s. That decade also saw a considerable diminution of what had up to then
been a strongly patriarchal society, with negative consequences for women’s
presence in public life and their role in policy analysis and with impacts on how
policy knowledge has been gendered.
Other distinguishing features included a cultural orientation to vocational
corporatism, first instituted in the form of subsidiarity and the powerful policy
role played by the Irish Catholic Church and then instituted in various forms of
corporate institutions, most notably social partnership, from 1987 to 2008. This
shift to social partnership was mirrored at a local level and forms of networked
governance evolved to address deficits in more formal policy capacity. While
networked governance was not even nor necessarily inclusive, non-state
actors began to more actively shape public policy as think tanks, civil society
organisations and others began to populate the policy analysis space. These
more complex spaces required more process-oriented skills and capacity for
networked policy analysis as well as innovation and experimentation. So too was
internationalisation important. From the 1950s, and particularly from the 1970s,
Ireland’s exposure, as an SOE, to international policy processes opened up new
policy influences and approaches to policy analysis including Europeanisation,
globalisation and policy transfer. Data and evidence from the Organisation for
5
Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), along with United Nations

(UN) norms, were key markers of this international context.
Of note over recent decades is how periods of boom and bust have affected
approaches to, and the capacity for, policy analysis. Ireland, in particular, was
a state where neoliberal discourse dominates(Phelan, 2007) and the country
was heralded as a triumph for neoliberal ideology during the Celtic Tiger
period (Powell, 2003). The global financial crisis of 2008 saw the onset
of what is referred to as the Great Recession and the subsequent years of
austerity. This period is associated with reflection, in Ireland and elsewhere,
about failures of policy analysis, particularly economic and financial policy
analysis, and consequent attempts to redress capacity deficits. It is notable that
as the economy stagnated, and the banks collapsed, Ireland was portrayed as
a disaster for neoliberal policies. On emerging from the crisis after the end of
the bailout in December 20131, the country has been held up again, as in the
late 1980s period of ‘expansionary fiscal contraction’, as a paragon of neoliberal
austerity. This economic revival appeared complete when in 2020 Ireland’s gross
domestic product (GDP) was estimated to be growing at 3.5% per annum, with
unemployment below 5%, and overall GDP significantly higher than at the
height of the Celtic Tiger. In this context, and with the focus on new social
risks, including demographic factors and particularly climate change, attention
had turned to policy innovation, only to be halted by the COVID-19 pandemic,
which has both laid bare the fault-lines of previous policies and presented
significant new challenges for policy analysis.
The 2008 economic crisis had a significant political legacy that over a decade
shifted what was a steady 2.5 party system dominated by two competing centrist
parties, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. The 2011 general election saw the incumbent
Fianna Fáil lose over two thirds of its parliamentary seats and a new Fine Gael–
Labour coalition government win over two thirds of the seats in Dáil Éireann.
In 2016, the Labour Party suffered heavy electoral losses, leaving a minority Fine
Gael party in government but dependent on a confidence and supply agreement
with the partially recovered Fianna Fáil. The increased political fragmentation
after the 2020 general election, that led to a new Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and
Green Party coalition, was a significant benchmark, signalling an end to almost
100 years of historical ‘civil war’ politics. It also demonstrated that Ireland, like
other countries, is now experiencing more political volatility, with complex
coalition formation and/or minority governments providing a new and likely
permanent context of policy making and policy analysis.
The content and structure of the book

‘Conceptualizing policy advice systematically, in terms of the configuration
of the various constituent elements in any given jurisdiction or policy sector
is useful for understanding how those parts interact in systems of advice and
influence’ (Craft and Howlett, 2013, p 193). This volume presents the results
6
of a comprehensive examination of policy analysis activities, at all levels of Irish

governance, and in the non-governmental sector. Each author has published
extensively in their area of expertise, while many also participated in a research
symposium2 in Dublin in November 2019 that sought to enable contributors
to see and develop linkages between their contributions and areas of expertise
and to develop understanding of where policy analysis stands in contemporary
Ireland. In line with the series that includes this volume, the authors set out to
explain a complex policy analytical and advisory landscape involving the state
and the non-governmental sector.
History, styles and methods of policy analysis in Ireland

In Chapter Two, Clare O’Mahony provides an overview of the emergence of
economic policy analysis in Ireland from independence to joining the European
Economic Community (EEC) in 1973. After independence, the government’s
focus was on state building, leaving limited scope for economic policy. During
the Great Depression of the 1930s, the state adopted a protectionist stance as the
rest of the world also looked inwards. However, little in the way of policy analysis
from a small and underdeveloped economics profession seems to have influenced
this approach. This changed in the late 1940s as outward-looking policies were
tentatively adopted and import substitution industrialisation was replaced by
export-led industrialisation. This occurred as Western Europe, recovering from
the Second World War, moved towards trade liberalisation. This marked the
beginning of Ireland’s long relationship with inward foreign direct investment
(FDI) that was to transform it into a globally integrated, cosmopolitan society.
O’Mahony points out that as the Irish economics profession developed, so did
its analytical skills. This resonates with the subsequent contributions of Rory
O’Donnell on social partnership in Chapter Ten and Chris McInerney on think
tanks in Chapter Eleven. As an SOE, Ireland’s economic policy analysis and
advice is framed by the international context.
In Chapter Three, Fiona Dukelow situates policy analysis within a social policy
context and begins by stressing its early theocratic formation. The chapter is an
examination of the history of social policy analysis in Ireland since the 1950s,
when the country began its journey towards modernity. The gradual change
in social policy analysis from the 1950s ties with Clare O’Mahony’s work on
economic policy analysis in Chapter Two, while social policy analysis evolution
is linked with Mary C. Murphy’s Chapter Nine on the European influence on
Irish policy analysis and policy making, and Rory O’Donnell’s Chapter Ten on
social partnership. The chapter reviews the actors and institutions involved and
the knowledge deployed as the country moved towards a globalised society with
its attendant social policy challenges. Dukelow charts the challenges of social
policy analysis under what she characterises as the shift from the dominance of a
theocentric paradigm to an econocentric paradigm. This saw the subordination
of the social to the economic valuation of social policy by the 1990s.
7
In Chapter Four, Muiris MacCarthaigh examines the development of the state’s

capacity for policy analysis. He begins by considering the origins and organisation
of the Irish civil service before examining the evolution of its policy analysis
capacity, with increasing ‘agencification’ from the early 1970s linking it with
O’Donnell’s discussion on social partnership in Chapter Ten. The economic crisis
after 2008 exposed failings in policy foresight and planning in the civil service.
Thus, the issue of policy analysis in the civil service emerged as of particular
salience, resulting in some important reforms. The discussion of civil service
reforms from the late 2000s ties with Frances Ruane’s work on evidence-based
policy making in Chapter Five and Richard Boyle and Joanna O’Riordan’s study
of the civil service in Chapter Eight. The chapter draws on interviews with
senior civil servants.
In Chapter Five, Frances Ruane discusses how in recent decades Ireland has
increasingly used empirical evidence in policy making, a trend that has become
prevalent in the EU over the past 30 years. Ireland has favoured an evidence-
informed approach to policy making, as opposed to an evidence-based approach,
as this integrates empirical evidence with an acknowledgement that other factors
that matter in policy making are not readily quantifiable. The chapter resonates
with MacCarthaigh’s work on reforms in the civil service in Chapter Four. An
important role in the process of integrating evidence into policy making has
been performed by the Central Statistics Office (CSO). This is through the
provision of high-quality datasets to inform policy. The chapter also examines
the investments made in the skills sets needed to analyse the vast quantities of data
available today and reviews the evolution of Irish Government Economic and
Evaluation Service (IGEES) in this regard. The chapter concludes by assessing
the challenges ahead, including the degree to which the prevalence of fake facts
endangers and undermines official statistics and carefully researched analyses.
Policy analysis at various levels of government: from local to the EU

In Chapter Six, Aodh Quinlivan focuses on the experience of policy analysis
in local government, a subject he finds more complex than might be expected.
While he acknowledges enormous weaknesses within the system – including
lack of constitutional protection; low autonomy; few functions; political,
administrative, functional and financial centralisation; and the rationalisation
of councils – he notes policy analysis potential. He finds that in individual,
often uncoordinated ways, local councils play innovative roles in economic
development and policy formulation, with local authorities pushing boundaries
with a variety of democratic reforms aimed at enhancing participation
in policy processes, including Public Participation Networks, which are
examined through a case study. This mass of contradictions represents a blend
of innovation, incrementalism, but also entrenchment of persistent challenges
regarding the form, functioning and financing of policy analysis potential of
local government.
8
In Chapter Seven, Bernadette Connaughton explores the historical and

contemporary role of parliamentary and other political committees in policy
analysis, and the institutional supports that enable their function in policy making.
While she asserts that the dearth of assistance and resources available to Teachtaí
Dála (TDs) has contributed to underwhelming legislative performance, she finds
that developments since 2011 provide an important context for amending relative
deficiencies in earlier reform initiatives and the systemic policy failures highlighted
by the crisis. The agenda to introduce political-administrative reform post-2011
included building policy analysis capacity within the Oireachtas and addressing the
significant imbalances in executive– legislative relations. In particular, three areas of
interest are explored – access to information and research capacity for policy analysis,
including the emerging Parliamentary Budget Office, which may encourage more
meaningful contributions in the public policy process; the development of the
committee system and its activities; and participation in inquiries.
In Chapter Eight, Richard Boyle and Joanna O’Riordan examine the
development of policy analysis in the civil service. Policy analysis is central to
the role of the civil service – developing and testing ideas about policy – at the
intersection of politics and administration. In the Whitehall tradition, inherited by
Ireland, civil servants were expected to be generalists with unpartisan perspectives.
Recruits to the civil service came from the liberal arts rather than professional
or technical backgrounds. But the 1960s and 1970s saw the gradual emergence
of the policy analysis concept. Policy analysis requires knowledge of the relevant
discipline under scrutiny, and some skills in quantitative analysis, combined with
the more traditional policy capabilities. Throughout the chapter, which focuses
on policy analysis developments in the civil service from the early 2000s, and
in particular changes that have taken place since the financial crisis of 2008, a
stronger evidence base emerges to better inform policy making. O’Riordan and
Boyle find that a balance between generalists with broad conceptual skills and
specialists with quantitative analytical skills continues to influence developments
with regard to policy analysis in the civil service.
In Chapter Nine, Mary C. Murphy reviews the influence of the EU on the
policy-making process and policy analysis in Ireland. The country’s membership
has been marked by periods of volatility, with support for the institution
wavering at times. Membership has aided Ireland’s global positioning and ability
to cope with international competition, but has also constrained the policy
analysis process as autonomous action by national actors can be limited by legal
commitments to EU membership. Policy initiatives emanating from the EU have
sometimes challenged conservative domestic constituencies. Resonating with the
contribution of MacCarthaigh in Chapter Four, Murphy provides a pair of policy
case studies to demonstrate a variety of Europeanisation effects across the Irish
policy analysis spectrum. Being part of the EU has produced distinct patterns
of adaptation and contestation at the domestic level. The consequences of EU
membership have been both expansive and comprehensive, affecting myriad
domestic issues, sectors and policies.
9
Think tanks, interest groups, political parties and gender-based policy analysis
In Chapter Ten, Rory O’Donnell examines policy analysis in the institutional
arrangements created by the state to involve the social partners – employers,
unions, framers and voluntary/community organisations – in the policy process,
particularly the National Economic and Social Council (NESC). This method
of policy analysis was developed in response to interest group dialogue, which in
Ireland took the shape of social partnership (1987–2008). The NESC’s early work
is examined, followed by a discussion on the significant changes in its role after
1986. Its analysis of the economic crisis of the 1980s in A Strategy for Development
1986–1990 (NESC, 1986) played a central role in the resolution of that crisis.
The NESC sees its role as a ‘boundary organisation’, managing the relationship
between policy analysis and diverse actors. Despite differences in overall national
patterns of policy analysis, and interest group mediation, O’Donnell argues there
were similarities between the use of policy analysis in interest group dialogue in
Ireland and elsewhere.
In Chapter Eleven, Chris McInerney reviews the role of think tanks in policy
making. Like most modern democracies, Ireland relies on a range of sources
to influence the choices and designs of public policy. Apart from political and
administrative influences, a wide variety of civil society, academic and private
sector actors seek to access, influence, advise, inform and sometimes embarrass
those in power. McInerney focuses on think tanks, defining them, reviewing
international experience, examining different types and considering the complex
issue of assessing think tank influence. He maps out Ireland’s limited think tank
landscape and examines recent developments. Think tanks’ influence on Irish
policy making is assessed across a number of indicators. McInerney’s chapter
speaks to a range of themes that are also examined in Chapters Three and
Chapter Twelve.
In Chapter Twelve, Mary P. Murphy and Orla O’Connor assess the relationship
between civil society organisations (CSOs) and policy analysis in contemporary
Ireland. Since the 1980s, CSOs have assumed an increasingly important role in
social, economic and environmental policy and have been resilient and versatile
in their approach to engaging with policy formation. Murphy and O’Connor
discuss two themes. First, they assert that the variety of CSOs is reflected in
their diverse range of models of change. The engagement of CSOs with public
policy has not evolve linearly. CSOs adapt their models of change to meet their
immediate political environment, in some cases requiring changes in their form
of policy analysis capacity. Technological changes also change the context of how
social media is used to utilise policy analysis and advocacy. Second, while during
social partnership (1987–2008) the CSOs’ space for policy analysis was expansive,
it has subsequently downsized. Simultaneously, a ‘new politics’ has emerged that
is characterised by new parliamentary and public forms of policy making that
require new forms of policy analytical capacity with different implications for
CSOs, bringing them closer to the political system.
10
In Chapter Thirteen, Maura Adshead and Diarmuid Scully examine the role
of political parties in the policy process. The chapter employs a model of the
policy process stages to examine how Irish political parties operate in each stage.
This constitutes an exploration of the extent to which so-called ‘new politics’
might have affected recent political party roles and performance. The authors
find that ‘new politics’, governments without a clear majority seeking consensual
support for their policies in the Dáil, is not new, with no single-party majority
government since 1977. Programmatic government has been normalised and
consensus seeking has become the modus operandi for parties. What is new is
that long-established parties are now joined by an increasing number of smaller
parties in the Dáil, raising the potential to shift the balance of power away from
the larger parties, with consequences for the style of, and capacity for, policy
analysis. However, the chapter shows that this tendency has been less marked
than might have been expected.
In Chapter Fourteen, Pauline Cullen explores gender expertise and policy
analysis. Gender policy analysis requires the expertise to apply gender as a
variable in the processes that generate policy analysis. A variety of individuals
and institutions in society, from academic to women’s policy agencies, provide
gender expertise through activities including gender audits, gender budgeting,
research and analysis, gender consultation, gender training and gender assessments.
Considering gender expertise permits us to make visible the types of knowledge
that qualify as expertise, the conditions under which such knowledge has
resonance with policy makers and can claim policy success. Understanding the
barriers preventing the successful application of gender equality policies gives
insights into how and why gender inequality persists.
The public, science and the media: the wider policy analysis environment in Ireland
In Chapter Fifteen, Clodagh Harris focuses on public consultation and
participation in Ireland, processes that directly engage citizens beyond the ballot
box. Initiatives, including participatory budgeting and deliberative mini-publics
such as citizens’ assemblies and citizens’ juries, endeavour to engage citizens more
directly in political processes either by widening and/or deepening participation.
As exercises in deliberative democracy, and demonstrations of political vitality,
they endeavour to place the citizen at the heart of constitutional and policy issues
as new types of governance arrangements are required for a complex networked
society. The methods used to facilitate public consultation, participation and
deliberation in Ireland are critically assessed as to whether they make a difference
to public policy, and whether effective consultation mechanisms can extend to
regulatory actors.
In Chapter Sixteen, Eoin Cullina, Jason Harold and John McHale examine
national science policy as a case study in evidence-based policy design. They
review the strategy and science of Irish science policy in light of the challenges
for such policies in an SOE. The success of knowledge-intensive industries
11
depends on access to knowledge. However, private firms tend to underinvest in

basic science where much of the benefit spills over to other firms, highlighting
an important role for governments. Governments of SOEs face two challenges in
devising a strategy for science policy: first, the benefits of science investments are
likely to flow disproportionately to other countries; second, small size may limit
the benefits of agglomeration economies that are central to many knowledge-
intensive industries. Despite obvious spillover and scale challenges, geographical
stickiness of new knowledge production and the capacity to absorb knowledge
from the global stock depends on being active at the frontiers of knowledge
production. The authors conclude that the national benefit of research is the
advantage in being able to access knowledge produced elsewhere.
In Chapter Seventeen, Brendan K. O’Rourke argues that a discursive approach
can add much to our understanding of what has happened in policy analysis in
Ireland. The concept of hyper-specialisation is introduced as an important feature
of the context in which policy discourse takes place, and shows the complexities
discourses face as they travel across societies. Policy-relevant discourses of media,
and actors within the media, are examined, along with what recent developments
mean for Irish public policy discourse. An important factor is how such policy
discourses are internationalised in Ireland and the impact of that complication
on participation in policy debates is examined. Further complexities include the
effects of technocratisation and economisation on how we discuss policy. The
chapter concludes that the discursive power of economists remains an important
feature of our policy discourses.
Conclusion
A ‘healthy policy-research community outside government can play a vital role
in enriching public understanding and debate of policy issues’ (Anderson, 1996,
p 486), and can function to support a government’s policy analysis capacity (Craft
and Howlett, 2013). The chapters in this book will certainly acquaint the reader
with the policy research and analysis community within and outside government
in Ireland. While they point to a range of competencies and deficits, they also
highlight the increasingly complex policy environment and the degree to which
the context for policy making and the political system is changing rapidly and
so requiring constant recasting and reframing of policy.3 The level of uncertainty
associated with social risks, and particularly climate change, means policy analysis
processes are increasingly challenged to innovate new approaches, new forms of
analysis, data and evidence. COVID-19 demonstrates this uncertainty and the
scale of responses required of policy analysis also gives us a new base from which
to compare Ireland’s response. These responses must be generated in a more
demanding political context with more temporary political coalitions requiring
often immediate ‘solutions’ to contemporary policy problems.
There is, however, room for optimism. The NESC (2010, p 280) reflects that
there is a need to compare, analyse and reflect on our policy capacity and in
12
particular to understand what makes good policy analysis work. In this context,
and reflected in the book, various policy institutions offer good practice, adopting
new-style information systems, review processes, citizen engagement and new
data and evidence bases. Policy capacity, often associated with EU regulations
and practices, is also enhanced by international developments, data, evidence
and benchmark goals. The UN Sustainable Development Goals offer focus and
direction for policy analysis for the next decade. At the time of writing, the
long-term impact of the COVID-19 pandemic was unknown, but it can be
expected to change politics, society and economics and to present ongoing
challenges for policy analysis in Ireland and internationally, as well as to open
up the space for those advocating for alternatives and even more paradigmatic
forms of transformation.
Looking to the future, wicked problems and grand societal challenges mean that
policy makers and policy analysts have to find ways to inform decision making
in contexts where there are no answers, or where the answers have significant
implication for the distribution of power and resources. Various chapters suggest
mixed results from innovative experiments in more deliberative processes of
policy analysis. While unique, place-based deliberations and experimentations
are more likely to generate realistic assessments of problems and solutions, they
cannot necessarily be scaled up and replicated in other contexts. Conversely,
national policy often runs the risk of failing in local circumstances without policy
mechanisms that can really understand and conceptualise the local context. The
challenge remains to broker policy learning back into more formal environments,
particularly in the context of weak regional and local governance, for without
bringing policy learning back to the centre higher order policy change is less
likely to take place.
Sabel (2020) argues that increased uncertainty requires a shift from a ‘look before
you leap’ style of analysis and decision making to a ‘look as you leap’ approach.
This necessarily requires more collaboration, consultation and co‑design, which
in turn requires a more complex set of skills, greater reflexivity and innovative
institutional processes from policy analysts and from citizens, residents, workers
and service users participating in processes of collective puzzlement. This means
shifts in power. All policy actors need to ensure that policy analysis incorporates
an intersectional lens, including assessment from gender and equality perspectives,
and that creative policy processes enable the full range of voices to inform
potential analysis and solutions.
Clearly defining the contributions of policy analysis to policy development and
implementation is challenging. This is because the policy-making process is a
black box. Largely unquantifiable factors, such as short-term political calculations,
play a significant role in policy decisions and policy making by government,
politicians and political entrepreneurs (Hogan and Feeney, 2012). While the
application of different styles of policy analysis has become increasingly prevalent
in Ireland over the past 30 years, examination of policy analysis is still in its
infancy and Ireland would benefit from more research in both the scale and
13
scope. This would enable us to chart more clearly efforts at policy analysis and the
influences and objectives behind it. That said, this volume encompasses a great
range of issues that are of critical importance to understanding contemporary
Irish policy analysis and highlight how, in a modern society, policies are highly
complex and integrated entities.
Notes
1 In December 2013 Ireland announced that it would not require further funds from the
International Monetary Fund, the European Commission and European Central Bank,
collectively referred to as the Trioka.
2 This symposium was hosted by Maynooth University and the Technological University Dublin,
and supported by the Business, Society and Sustainability Research Centre in the College of
Business, Technological University Dublin.
3 The editors draw here on reflections about policy analysis from the conference Knowledge and
Policy: Confronting Governance Challenges in the New Decade, NESC and Department of
Sociology, Maynooth University, 7 January 2020, Dublin.
References
Anderson, G. (1996) ‘The new focus on the policy capacity of the federal
government’, Canadian Public Administration, 39(4): 469–88.
Chari, R., Hogan, J., Murphy, G. and Crepaz, M. (2019) Regulating Lobbying: A
Global Comparison (2nd edn), Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Craft, J. and Howlett, M. (2013) ‘The dual dynamics of policy advisory systems:
the impact of externalization and politicization on policy advice’, Policy and
Society, 32(3): 187–97.
Dobuzinskis, L., Howlett, M. and Laycock, D. (2007) ‘Policy analysis in Canada:
the state of the art’, in L. Dobuzinskis, M. Howlett and D. Laycock (eds) Policy
Analysis in Canada: The State of the Art, Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
pp 1–24.
Goodwin, S. and Phillips, R. (2015) ‘Policy capacity in the community sector’,
in B. Head and K. Crowley (eds) Policy Analysis in Australia, Bristol: Policy
Press, pp 245–58.
Head, B. and Crowley, K. (eds) (2015) Policy Analysis in Australia, Bristol: Policy
Press.
Heclo, H. (1974) Modern Social Policies in Britain and Sweden: From Relief to Income
Maintenance, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Hogan, J. and Feeney, S. (2012) ‘Crises and policy change – the role of the political
entrepreneur’, Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy, 4(2): 1–16.
Howlett, M. (2009) ‘Policy analytical capacity and evidence-based policy-making:
lessons from Canada’, Canadian Public Administration, 52(2): 153–75.
Howlett, M. and Ramesh, M. (2003) Studying Public Policy: Policy Cycles and Policy
Subsystems (2nd edn), Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kirby, P. and Murphy, M. (2011) Towards a Second Republic: Irish Politics after the
Celtic Tiger, London: Pluto.
Meltsner, A.J. (1979) ‘Creating a policy analysis profession’, Society, 16(6): 45–51.
14
NESC (National Economic and Social Council) (1986) A Strategy for Development
1986–1990: Growth, Employment and Fiscal Balance, Report No. 83, Dublin:
NESC.
NESC (2010) Re-Finding Success in Europe: The Challenge for Irish Institutions and
Policy, Report No. 122, Dublin: NESC.
Phelan, S. (2007) ‘The discourses of neoliberal hegemony: the case of the Irish
Republic’, Critical Discourse Studies, 4(1): 29–48.
Powell, B. (2003) ‘Economic freedom and growth: the case of the Celtic Tiger’,
Cato Journal, 22(3): 431–48.
Sabel, C. (2020) ‘Governance and wicked problems: environment, climate,
human services and quality jobs’, Paper presented at the Knowledge and Policy:
Confronting Governance Challenges in the New Decade conference, NESC
and Department of Sociology, Maynooth University, Dublin, 7 January.
15
Part One
History, styles and methods
of policy analysis in Ireland
17
TWO
The evolution of economic

policy analysis in Ireland
Clare O’Mahony
Introduction
This chapter traces the emergence of modern economic policy analysis in
Ireland in the critical industrialisation drives in Ireland’s development path from
independence in 1922 to joining the then European Economic Community
(EEC) in 1973.
At independence, Ireland was in political turmoil, having fought a war of
independence and subsequently a civil war. The economy was underdeveloped
and predominantly agricultural. Living standards were low and emigration was
high. The overarching economic problem was job creation. In the early years of
the new independent state, given the political climate, the government’s primary
focus was on state building and the scope of economic policy was limited. From
1932, a change in government saw the state take a more interventionist role in the
economy, adopting an isolationist, protectionist outlook and building economic
self-sufficiency through import substitution industrialisation (ISI). This was only
vaguely rooted in economic reasoning, founded more on nationalist sentiments
than on solid economic analysis. There was a shift in both the use of economic
policy analysis and in the approach towards industrialisation from 1948 with a
reorientation to outward-looking policies and the encouragement of export-led
industrialisation (ELI). This radical change was to transform the country from
narrowly focused and insular to outward-looking and cosmopolitan.
Irish economic policy is shaped by the interaction of various stakeholders and
interest groups, framed by the changing international environment. As a small,
dependent, post-colonial economy, Ireland has always been subject to external
influences but has limited bargaining power. This limits the scope of domestic
policy making. Ireland’s protectionist period largely coincided with the rest of the
world looking inwards, following the Great Depression during the 1930s. The shift
to outward-looking policy occurred in tandem with the movement towards trade
liberalisation after the Second World War. There were also wider domestic social
and political influences on economic policy making, including nationalism and
the power of the Catholic Church (which was suspicious of economic planning
and government intervention, considering these to be aligned with socialism).
While today much of the economic policy analysis is conducted by economists,
whether in the public or private sector, in the early years of the state, it was
19
largely undertaken by civil servants, with limited contributions from academia

and foreign experts. The Irish economics profession was initially small but
expanded over time, as did the quantity and quality of economic analysis.
The next sections briefly look at Ireland’s experience of industrialising and the
significance of its links with Britain. These are followed by a discussion of the
dearth of economic policy analysis during the ISI era and its emergence at the
same time as the policy approach itself shifted towards ELI. The chapter finishes
with some concluding comments.
Industrialisation: the Irish experience

Immediately following independence in 1922, there was only a limited drive
towards industrialisation, which was supported by low tariffs. The relatively
laissez-faire approach to industrialisation can be attributed to the need to focus
on state building as well as to the support base of the government party Cumann
na nGaedheal, mainly drawn from large-scale farmers and professionals who
were in favour of free trade and maintaining the status quo (O’Malley, 1989).
Agriculture was viewed as the key to prosperity.
The first move to an active industrial policy began with a change in government
in 1932. The new Fianna Fáil government’s support base was small-scale farmers
and workers (O’Malley, 1989). The emphasis was on self-sufficiency through
ISI and protectionism. Tools used included tariffs, quotas and import licensing,
together with the Control of Manufactures Acts of 1932 and 1934, which
required majority Irish ownership of industry. This policy resulted in some
economic growth, but large-scale emigration continued, as jobs were lost in
agriculture as quickly as they were created in manufacturing industry (Ryan,
1955). Increases in living standards were attributable as much to emigration as
to economic growth per se.
By the 1950s, there was frustration with the continued high levels of emigration
but few opportunities for ISI remained.1 Rising import demand from both
consumers and import-substituting domestic industry, combined with the fall
in meat exports following the end of rationing in Britain, led to balance of
payments crises in the 1950s (FitzGerald, 1957; O’Malley, 1989). The shift to
outward-looking policies and ELI was a three-pronged approach involving trade
liberalisation together with fiscal inducements in the form of tax concessions
and grants. Given the difficulties that protected domestic industry was likely
to experience in building export capacity, this inevitably involved incentivising
foreign direct investment (FDI), a policy often referred to as ‘industrialisation
by invitation’.
Links with Britain

Until 1922, Ireland had effectively been a province of the British Empire. At
independence, the Irish economy was heavily intertwined with the British
20
The evolution of economic policy analysis in Ireland
economy and there was institutional continuity, particularly in the civil service
(Garvin, 2004). Economic policy analysts looked to Britain as a comparator.
This is understandable given the historic ties, geographical proximity, common
language, common labour market and very high level of trade between the two
countries. In the 1950s, approximately 80% of Irish exports still went to Britain
and most of the remainder went to other Commonwealth countries or former
British colonies (FitzGerald, 1959).
However, there were crucial differences between Ireland and Britain. First,
Ireland was a latecomer to industrialisation whereas Britain was the birthplace of
the Industrial Revolution. Second, Ireland was a post-colonial economy, unique
in Western Europe. O’Malley (1989) discusses the dependency of latecomers
on ‘dominant advanced countries’, citing the ideas of the dependency school
of economic development. Britain’s dominance played a central role in policy
analysis, from the inward-looking self-sufficiency of ISI to the outward-looking
policy of ELI. Both policy approaches were partially informed by a political
desire to be economically independent from Britain. Kennedy and colleagues
(1988) argue that the insularity of the 1930s was a search to find a national
identity differentiated from Britain. The political will that production should be
in Irish hands therefore weakened understandably in the face of potential United
States (US) rather than United Kingdom (UK) ownership (Barry and O’Mahony,
2017). Third, Ireland was relatively poor. Foyle (1959) cites 1956 statistics from
the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation (OEEC) – the precursor
of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) –
that record Ireland’s average income per capita as half that of Britain’s and one
quarter that of the US.2 Fourth, Britain was a large economy while Ireland had
a small domestic market. Ireland’s population in the 1920s, at less than three
million, was only a small fraction of the UK’s population of over 44 million.
The idea that Ireland was very different from Britain does not seem to have
been part of the consciousness. Severing the psychological link was difficult,
given that Ireland had been a British colony for centuries. According to Lee
(1989, p 628), the Irish situation was seen as ‘only a deviation, from the English
norm, and not a difference in kind’. Furthermore, Britain remained an important
trading partner and political stability required maintaining a good relationship
(Kennedy et al, 1988). Referring to this ‘anglocentricity’, Fanning (1983) cites
the Swedish economist, Per Jacobsson who sat on the Banking Commission from
1934 to 1938, remarking that the Irish only knew big economies like Britain
and the US, and had to be encouraged to consider countries such as Sweden and
Switzerland as suitable models.
An important aspect of this openness to the British economy was the freedom
to work in Britain. This provided an effective floor to wages and opportunities
for Irish emigrants, fostering familial and social connections between the two
countries. However, despite strong institutional, economic and social ties, there
was a political desire to break the link with the ‘old master’. This was a factor in
the drive to self-sufficiency in the 1930s, with Ryan (1955, p 59) arguing that
21
‘political dissatisfaction’ with the importance of Britain in our international trade

turned self-sufficiency into a ‘means in itself ’. It was also the backdrop that made
it easier to push through outward-looking reforms, particularly after the US took
over from Britain as the main global source of FDI.3 Links with the US were
politically more palatable (Barry and O’Mahony, 2017).
Industrialisation without economic policy analysis, 1922–47

In the early years, the main observation to be made about economic policy
analysis is that it was largely non-existent. Policy making in this period has been
variously described as piecemeal, unsophisticated, haphazard and indiscriminate,
without a long-term vision and giving an impression of spontaneity (Ryan, 1955;
Kennedy et al, 1988; Lee, 1989). Garvin (2004, p 221) claims that empirical
research was seen as ‘no substitute for common sense’ while FitzGerald (1959,
p 141) argues that the protectionist policy of the 1930s and 1940s was based on
assumptions behind which there was ‘virtually no economic research’ so that
this policy may have been ‘founded on misconceptions or mis-understandings’.
Lee (1989), for example, describes civil servants trawling through lists to find
imported products that might be capable of substitution by domestic producers.
Fanning (1983) argues that the lack of dynamic policy analysis in the early
decades of the state may be attributable to there being no substantial debate
among economists prior to independence about the shape of post-independence
economic policy, probably owing to the speed at which independence happened.
The lack of economic policy analysis can also be attributed to the small pool
of economic talent available, limited resources and the contraction of university
economics departments in the 1920s and 1930s (Fanning, 1983; Kennedy, 1993).
From time to time, university economists acted as advisers to government,
but there appears also to have been some unwillingness to use them, and a
preference to seek advice from foreign experts, such as the aforementioned Per
Jacobsson on the Banking Commission. Fanning (1983, p 139) argues that there
were frequent tensions between politicians and economists which were ‘more
stultifying than creative’. There was also considerable debate about the role of
academic economists in policy analysis. They were criticised for being detached
from Irish economic policy analysis (Fanning, 1983; Lee, 1989). However, the
academics pointed out that their very limited resources needed to be devoted to
teaching-related activities, thereby preventing them from carrying out research
on the scale seen in other countries (Fanning, 1983; Kennedy, 1993). In addition,
many academic economists did not have the necessary skills, for example in
industrial economics (FitzGerald, 1959; Lee, 1989). Furthermore, the political
leanings of the university economists, in common with other professions and
many civil servants, did not generally align with those of the governments in
the 1930s, in some cases being quite hostile (Fanning, 1983; Lee, 1989). Senior
university economists were ‘pre-Keynesian’ and against protectionism and state
intervention (Fanning, 1983). Lee (1989, p 192) describes self-sufficiency as being
22
‘pushed through the teeth of the public derision of the professional economist
and of the somewhat more discrete distaste of many civil servants’.
Motivations were not always economic and development theories did not
play a role, except for a nod to the infant industry argument.4 The drive to self-
sufficiency was primarily motivated by nationalism and the desire for economic
independence from Britain. In the 1940s, James Meenan, an academic economist,
argued that ‘industrial policy has been one of the most bitterly contested issues
in our politics … at no time have the arguments used been purely technical;
economics have been thoroughly subordinated to political feeling’ (Meenan,
1943, p 209). The policy horizon was short-term, focusing on the volume of
production, jobs and the reduction of emigration, with little consideration given
to productivity itself and the building a solid industrial base of efficient industry
(Ryan, 1955; FitzGerald, 1957; Kennedy et al, 1988).
ISI is a common tool in the early stages of economic development and
Irish industry could probably not have achieved the scale it reached without
protectionism in this era (FitzGerald, 1959; O’Malley, 1989). Ultimately, however,
many of the jobs created were not viable in the long term, as the economy
opened up to free trade and a competitive environment. In an evaluation of
the ISI era, Ryan (1955) pointed out that the policy had four key economic
objectives – job creation, self-sufficiency, maintaining infrastructure and social
services on a par with the UK and stemming emigration and the flight from
the land – but that none of these had been particularly achieved. Over the years
1946–51, about 800 jobs were created per year compared with annual emigration
of around 24,400 (Lynch et al, 1953). Furthermore, protectionism had not
reduced imports, but merely changed their composition with domestic import-
substituting industry importing raw materials and semi-finished goods (Ryan,
1955; Lee, 1989). There was little export activity by domestic manufacturers so
that imports were chiefly financed by agricultural exports. Crucially, infrastructure
and social services lagged behind the UK, and emigration and flight from the
land continued (Ryan, 1955).
Emergence of economic policy analysis, 1948–73
The need for new economic thinking

Ireland largely missed out on the prosperity found elsewhere in Western Europe
after the Second World War, due to its reliance on agriculture, supply-side
weaknesses in manufacturing and a much smaller level of aid from the Marshall
Plan (officially titled the European Recovery Program) than other countries.5
The post-war period saw significant changes both in the industrial policy
approach and in economic policy analysis. Fanning (1983) takes 1948, the year
the Republic was declared,6 as the starting point of the new era, arguing that
with the resolution of Irish sovereignty, greater attention could be given to
economic policy. At the same time, changes in both the international economic
23
environment, and domestic economic difficulties as the economy reached the

exhaustion of ISI, showed the need for new economic policies.
After the Second World War, there was a general move internationally towards
trade liberalisation as well as discussion on developing a free trade area in Europe.
Marshall Aid also required a commitment to trade liberalisation. Free trade
therefore appeared to be inevitable, which brought into sharp focus the need to
develop export capacity. This posed particular challenges to the Irish economy. ISI
encouraged the production of goods in which the country had no comparative
advantage, thus raising costs and prices. Higher costs were attributable to the lack
of competition (leading to rent seeking), to Ireland’s peripheral location, which
pushed up transport costs, and to the small size of the domestic market, which
meant that firms could not avail of economies of scale (O’Mahony, 1959). Such
supply-side weaknesses meant that firms not only lacked the potential to develop
export capacity but were vulnerable in a free trade environment.
A number of domestic crises at the time helped fuel a rethink of economic
policy. The post-war dollar shortage in Europe, combined with a substantial
increase in Irish imports from the US, led the government to establish the Dollar
Export Advisory Committee (DEAC) in 1950. The balance of payments crisis
of 1955/56, resulting in deflationary measures and recession, and the further
decline in population evident in the 1956 Census of Population exacerbated the
feeling of despondency in the country and opened up the people’s eyes to the
need for change (FitzGerald, 1957; O’Malley, 1989). Furthermore, proximity to
Britain and the increasing availability of magazines and ultimately television led
to a ‘demonstration effect’ of the welfare state, full employment and rising living
standards elsewhere, also evident by the publication at this stage of international
league tables (Kennedy et al, 1988). There was a feeling that Ireland was lagging
behind. It transpired the Irish people were not satisfied with frugal comforts as
had been urged by nationalist leaders.
The ISI stage had become exhausted, with few import substitution opportunities
remaining and agriculture unlikely to drive strong growth. Most governments
employed protectionist measures to protect their farmers, thus limiting the
growth potential of Irish agriculture (Kennedy et al, 1988). Furthermore, as
demand for food is income-inelastic, growth in economies reliant on agriculture
will lag behind other economies. At the time, FitzGerald (1957) cited an OEEC
report forecasting an increase of less than 10% in demand for agricultural output,
compared with a more than 30% expected rise in demand for consumer durables
in northwest Europe over the period 1955–60.
There was therefore a broad consensus across society that new thinking was
needed. The supply of new ideas in academia had been limited, in part because
of the shortage of resources in the universities preventing growth of academic
departments. Fanning (1983) notes that of the 12 (broadly defined) chairs of
economics in 1958, all but one was appointed before 1932. Lynch and colleagues
(1953, p 260) argued that ‘unless constantly nourished by new ideas, public
policy becomes a thing stunted and wilted’ concluding that the economist must
24
urge the early adoption of new ideas, citing Keynes’ famous phrase ‘in the long
run we are all dead’. Barry and O’Mahony (2017) describe the demand and
supply sides in the market for new ideas at the time, placing the 1950s economic
crises and renewed political competition on the demand side, with institutional
developments and US foreign interests on the supply side.7 Efforts had begun
in the late 1940s to develop export-oriented industry through institutional
developments, in particular the establishment of the Industrial Development
Authority (IDA) in 1949 and Córas Tráchtála (the Export Board) in 1951 to
promote exports, as recommended by DEAC. The fiscal tools of export profits
tax relief (EPTR) and the extension of new industry grants nationwide were
announced in 1956.8 Another institutional development important to the
emergence of economic policy analysis was the establishment of the Central
Statistics Office (CSO) in 1948 (see Chapter Five, this volume). The sharp
change in policy was also achieved through generational change. Politically, too,
there was a new generation in power and a dying away of the old generation of
nationalist revolutionaries (Garvin, 2004). Younger economists such as Patrick
Lynch and Louden Ryan, who held Keynesian views, common elsewhere, came
to the fore, while senior economists continued to be anti-interventionist and
were as disparaging of Fianna Fáil’s outward-looking policy as they were of its
inward-looking policy previously.
The publication of Economic Development (Whitaker, 1958) is a landmark
in Ireland’s development path, marking an important turning point in policy
orientation as well as in economic policy analysis. This was closely followed by
the First Programme for Economic Expansion. T.K. Whitaker, the Secretary
of the Department of Finance, and Seán Lemass, then Minister for Industry
and Commerce, are widely seen as the architects of Ireland’s outward-looking
economic policy, although moves towards this had begun earlier.9
Economic Development was the first survey of industrial policy, although there
had been in-depth analyses of agriculture and financial policies (FitzGerald,
1959). Lee (1989, p 581) describes it as a ‘major contribution to the supply
of organised economic intelligence’, yet it was not as thorough as those other
studies, which FitzGerald (1959) attributes to the lack of expertise in industrial
economics, as well as to the variety and complex nature of industry and the lack
of adequate data.
Building economic policy analysis

The lack of suitable and high-quality data restricted economic policy analysis
generally. Under protectionism, the only data available on which to base price
controls (needed due to the lack of competition) related to the costs of current
manufacturers, meaning that there was no penalty for inefficiency and no
incentive for new entrants to use least-cost methods of production (Ryan, 1955).
Lee (1989, p 191) writes that Ireland did collect a lot of economic data for an
underdeveloped country, but that these data were not ‘operationally relevant’.
25
Changes in classification and coverage affected the usefulness of the data.

FitzGerald (1959) gives the example of the assessment in Economic Development
of the numbers of jobs created under protectionism using employment figures
from the Census of Industrial Production, but coverage changed so that direct
comparisons could not be made between different years. Therefore, according
to FitzGerald (1959), over the 31 years between 1926 and 1957, the increase in
employment in transportable goods industries was 50–60% and not the two-and-
a-half times claimed. Lemass later recalled making policy decisions by guesswork
due to the lack of useful economic data and that things would have been easier
if there had been better knowledge available (Lee, 1989; Garvin, 2004). As data
improved, particularly after the establishment of the CSO, so did policy analysis.
There was a significant change in attitude towards economic policy analysis in
this period and growing recognition of the need for more economic research.
The impetus for change came from the civil service rather than academia, the
universities only catching up later (Fanning, 1983). Although, Garvin (2004)
points out, in the 1950s economic policy analysis was mainly carried out by civil
servants rather than by academics, Lynch and colleagues (1953, p 260) argued that
civil servants should seek the advice of economists ‘to preserve the principles that
have been tested by time and to try, if they can, to enrich the currency of ideas’.
Tensions continued, however, between civil servants and university economists
over the latter’s lack of applied economics research and disinterest in mathematical
and statistical methods (Fanning, 1983; Lee, 1989). Fanning (1983) describes the
debate between civil servants and academic economists carried out in the 1940s
and early 1950s at the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland.
Walsh and Whelan (2010) see the advice from the Capital Investment Advisory
Committee in 1956 as the ‘cornerstone’ of Economic Development. The formation
of this committee largely bypassed local academic economists, pointedly so
according to Lee (1989). The only senior economist on the committee was
Charles Carter, a professor from Queen’s University Belfast. It did, however,
include Lynch and Ryan. Lynch argued fervently for capital spending and
considered the insistence on balanced budgets to be ‘a dangerous fetish’ (Fanning,
1983, p 154). Ryan has been credited with introducing rigour and structures
to the provision and analysis of economic data in the civil service (The Irish
Times, 2018). Both were to become prominent economists and continued to
act as government advisers. Ryan, for example, was a technical director to the
Economic Development Board (1959–61) and later an economic consultant
(1961–69) to the Department of Finance. Keynesian influence is evident in the
attitude to state intervention underpinning Economic Development.
This period also saw a number of consultancy reports commissioned from US
business consultancies, beginning with the ‘Stacy May’ report of 1952, paid for
from Marshall Plan funds. Garvin (2004, p 104) notes that US advice is generally
more welcome than that of ‘British or local experts’. Barry and O’Mahony
(2017) argue that a passing reference to Puerto Rico in the Stacy May report may
have been the basis for EPTR. Puerto Rico had free access to the US market
26
but was outside the US tax system, thereby attracting US industry through tax
holidays and other concessions. Following an IDA visit to the US, a 1956 IDA
report noted that many US firms had enquired about the availability of similar
tax concessions in Ireland (Barry and O’Mahony, 2017).
Tensions in policy making

Tensions continued to exist between economic policy analysts and politicians.
For example, commitments to decentralisation have been part of Irish political
policy since independence. In 1952, the first industrial grants were available to
firms establishing in areas designated as ‘undeveloped’. However, in drafting
Economic Development, Whitaker (1958) saw no rationale for these grants, arguing
that the whole country was underdeveloped (FitzGerald, 1959). In a protectionist
environment, higher costs in remote locations required higher tariffs and pushed
up consumer prices. In a free trade environment, such industries were likely to
be uncompetitive. However, the political will did not exist to change this policy
and Whitaker was overruled (Barry and Daly, 2011). When grants were extended
nationwide in 1956, higher rates remained in the undeveloped areas (O’Malley,
1989; Meyler and Strobl, 2000). FitzGerald (1959, p 140) criticised politicians for
clientelism, writing: ‘It is evident that in a country whose public representatives
in parliament find it so difficult to rise above local loyalties and to contemplate
the country’s problems from a national view-point, undue pressure towards ill-
considered decentralization of industry must always be a danger to be guarded
against’ (see Chapter Thirteen, this volume).
Tensions also existed within the civil service between the Department of Finance
and the Department of Industry and Commerce. The latter was responsible for
various initiatives such as the establishment of the IDA and Córas Tráchtála, and
for introducing EPTR in 1956. Tax concessions for exporters had previously
been opposed by the Department of Finance and the Revenue Commissioners
(Barry and O’Mahony, 2017). According to Barry and Ó Fathartaigh (2012),
both Lee (1989) and FitzGerald (1958) saw Economic Development as a Department
of Finance bid to regain power and influence over economic policy.
Achieving the shift to export-led industrialisation

Although the shift to outward-looking policy is widely viewed today mainly as
a way of attracting FDI, this was seen at the time as only one facet of the policy.
The main emphasis was on building export capacity. There was a lot of discussion
about developing natural resources, especially agriculture. There were also efforts
to support existing industry to adapt to a free trade environment. The Committee
on Industrial Organisation (CIO) was appointed in 1961, representing industry,
trade unions and public servants. It concluded that much of domestic industry
would not be competitive under free trade, mainly due to small-scale and
short production runs leading to high costs, management deficiencies, lack of
27
training, old buildings and equipment, and poor quality of design, packaging and
marketing (Ryan and O’Donoghue, 1965; O’Malley, 1989). The CIO called for
adaptation measures, which led to the establishment of Adaptation Councils for
each industry and an Adaptation Grants scheme in 1963 (Ryan and O’Donoghue,
1965; O’Malley, 1989). In the event, most export activity in the decades since
has been by foreign-owned industry.
The transition from ISI to ELI is often politically problematic in developing
countries. In Ireland, there was a concerted effort to push through the new policy
in the face of expected opposition from vested interests. In a highly unusual move,
Economic Development was published under the name of T.K. Whitaker. Barry (2010)
argues that this made it appear a national publication, helping provide political
cover to protect against pressure from interest groups. The broad consensus across
society facilitated the process. FitzGerald (1957) noted that the overwhelmingly
positive commentary on the proposed free trade area, in the media and in speeches
by politicians, economists and business people, showed a very sudden change in
public opinion and a widespread acceptance of the end of protectionism.
Barry and O’Mahony (2017) describe policy makers of all parties as ‘inching’
each other towards the reforms. Buy-in was also achieved through the focus on
exporters and the continuation of the Control of Manufactures Acts, which were
only repealed in 1964. New firms were not seen as competing with incumbent
industry (Brock, 1968; Barry and O’Mahony, 2017). There was also a concerted
effort to sell the new policy to politicians and vested interests. Garvin (2004,
p 138) notes, for example, that a 1957 article by Carter had originally been
delivered as a lecture and subsequently distributed to members of the government
in what he calls ‘a carefully orchestrated move’. In this article, Carter argued
that foreign ownership would bring advanced technology and capital into the
country and that large firms had advantages in many industries through their
better management, ability to invest in research and development, and greater
access to funding, going against ‘favourite illusions’ about domestic ownership
and small firms (Carter, 1957, p 140).
The establishment of the Economic and Social Research Institute

A critical development in economic policy analysis was the establishment of the
Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) in 1960 with a statistician, Roy
Geary, formerly in charge of the CSO, as its first director.10 The work required
for Economic Development had shown Whitaker and others the need for more
extensive rigorous independent economic analysis in Ireland, as was happening
in other countries (FitzGerald, 1959; Kennedy, 1993). FitzGerald (1959, p 141)
had argued that the lack of economic research ‘may well prove to be the biggest
single bottle-neck in the process of planning and promoting the development of
our economic resources’.
The ESRI was initially established with funding from the Ford Foundation in
the US (Kennedy, 1993). Like many things in Ireland, it was extensively modelled
28
on a British institution, the National Institute for Economic and Social Research,
but Geary also visited the National Bureau for Economic Research in the US
(Kennedy, 1993). The shortage of economists worldwide, meant some teething
problems with Geary finding it difficult initially to recruit and retain senior
research staff (Kennedy, 1993). The ESRI was key to the substantial increase in
applied, empirical, economic research after 1960 (see Chapter Five, this volume).
For example, it contributed to the Second Programme for Economic Expansion.
Kennedy (1993, p 232) credits Geary’s introduction of a system of research
assistants and postgraduate fellowships to study abroad in order to train young
economists as ‘eventually transformed the state of economics’ in Ireland.
Conclusion
This chapter has traced the emergence of modern economic policy analysis in
Ireland by looking in particular at the contributions of economic policy analysis
to industrialisation policies of the 1930s and 1950s.
Ireland is a small open economy and policy options are restricted by events in
the international environment. Ireland is also unique in Western Europe in being
a post-colonial economy and was underdeveloped at the time of independence
in 1922. There were no useful models for economic policy design. The critical
shift in policy in the 1950s from inward-looking ISI to outward-looking ELI
was made possible by a broad consensus for the need for change. It marked the
beginning of Ireland’s experience with FDI. Ireland today is one of the most
internationalised and FDI-intensive economies in the world. Outward-looking
economic policy was to transform all aspects of the country from insularity to
being part of the global community. The economic transformation, documented
here, later gained momentum after EEC entry in 1973. The important role that
FDI plays in the Irish economy was not foreseen at the time.
Economic policy analysis was virtually non-existent in the early decades after
independence. This was largely due to the small size of the economics profession
as well as structural issues such as tensions between policy makers, academic
economists and politicians and the shortage of resources in the universities. There
was also a lack of adequate data, the CSO finally being established only in 1948.
There was a growing recognition of the need for economic policy analysis
after the Second World War. The gains from ISI had slowed and the world had
changed. Radical reform was required. At the same time, the old guard was being
replaced by younger economists who were open to new thinking and methods.
Gradually the quality and quantity of information improved and economic policy
analysis became more sophisticated and rigorous. Institutions that enabled this
change were established in the late 1940s and 1950s, particularly the CSO, IDA
and ESRI. These continue to be important today. The universities began to
expand their economics departments from the 1950s and the profession grew.
Today economists are to be found in the civil service, state bodies, research
institutes and academia, as well as in the private sector.
29
Although the emergence of economic policy analysis was gradual and largely
non-existent before the 1950s, Ireland seemed to stumble on policies that
distinctly resemble those often recommended to late-industrialising countries.
ISI was reasonably successful for a time, but eventually encountered difficulties
with slower growth and balance of trade deficits, common when the ‘early
stage’ of ISI has ended. The adoption of outward-looking policies, together with
membership of the EEC in 1973, eventually saw the country ‘catch up’. While
in the early decades after independence economic policy analysis was largely
undertaken within the civil service, with limited contributions from academia
and foreign experts, today it is mostly conducted by economists, whether in the
public or private sector.
Notes
1 O’Malley (1989) argues that the economy had largely exhausted the ‘easy’ stage of ISI by this
time. Indeed, Lee (1989) claims that the domestic market was saturated with Irish-made goods
by 1938.
2 The OEEC was established in 1948 to distribute Marshall Plan (European Recovery Program)
aid in Europe. As its membership expanded beyond Europe, it became the OECD.
3 Between 1938 and 1950, the US became the major source of outward FDI, and US FDI in
Europe increased sharply in the 1950s (Barry and O’Mahony, 2017).
4 Prior to independence, nationalist leaders, in particular Arthur Griffith (the founder of Sinn
Féin), had made the infant industry argument for tariff protection, although the technicalities
of achieving this were not set out (Kennedy et al, 1988; Lee, 1989). Fianna Fáil’s commitment
to protectionism and self-sufficiency went far beyond Griffith’s infant industry argument
attributable to the interests of their supporters and to the nationalism of the party leadership
(O’Malley, 1989).
5 This was due to Ireland’s neutrality during the Second World War and its subsequent refusal to
join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
6 This resulted in Ireland exiting the British Commonwealth, an association of mostly former
British colonies.
7 Fianna Fáil had been in power almost consistently since 1932 but experienced significant
electoral opposition on a number of occasions around this time.
8 EPTR was available on increases in export sales above the 1956 level so it benefitted new firms
more than incumbents, as new firms were able to avail of relief on all exports.
9 Lemass was also the architect of the protectionist isolationism of the 1930s. He was essentially
interested in economic development. Lee (1989, p 188) outlines how Lemass was capable of
shifting course as needed, declaring himself a ‘pragmatic protectionist’.
10 This was originally the Economic Research Institute (ERI) with social research added a few
years later.
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32
THREE
The evolution of social policy analysis

in Ireland: from a theocentric to
an econocentric paradigm?
Fiona Dukelow
Introduction
This chapter discusses the history of social policy analysis in the Ireland, tracing its
evolution since the late 1950s and tracking Ireland’s emergence from a relatively
insular and theocentric context to a much more diverse, wealthy and globalised
society. The ongoing challenges of social policy analysis are explored under what
might be characterised as a shift from the dominance of a theocentric paradigm
to an econocentric paradigm that privileges the economic in how social policy
is valued and how social policy analysis is conducted. An econocentric mode of
thinking about social policy and society is certainly not exclusive to Ireland but
the chapter aims to draw out its localised effects in the Irish context.
Framing the history of Irish social policy analysis as a transition from a
theocentric to an econocentric paradigm risks being facile and simplifying more
complex realities. In each case, I suggest that these are relatively dominant rather
than total paradigms and the transition is not necessarily linear. Counter-currents
always exist, and the chapter seeks to acknowledge and critically analyse these
too (see Chapter Fourteen, this volume). Evoking Dean’s (2018) image of the
reach of social policy as a promiscuous magpie, the chapter consequently casts a
relatively wide net, including over governmental and academic settings, but also
aims to recognise the wider landscape of actors, advocates and forms of knowledge
influencing social policy analysis, including social movements, the media and
non-governmental organisations (NGOs) (see Chapter Twelve, this volume).
These parameters necessarily mean that a broad sweep is presented, raising many
avenues that require further research beyond the scope of this chapter. The chapter
proceeds in three sections: first, focusing on the late 1950s and 1960s as a period
in which theocentric social policy analysis was beginning to decline; second,
looking at the 1970s and the 1980s as a period when more distinct modes of social
policy analysis, with a particular focus on poverty and inequality began to emerge;
and third, looking at the 1990s to the late 2000s as a time when social change
accelerated and significant change to how social policy was analysed took place on
many fronts. The chapter concludes with a brief reflection on the contemporary
period, noting the more explicit reassertion of econocentric modes of analysis.
33
The late 1950s and 1960s: a waning theocentric paradigm

In the words of Kaim-Caudle (1967, p 5), ‘few would think of Ireland primarily
in the context of a Welfare Society’. Two factors in particular shaped this situation.
The first was the close ties between Britain and Ireland. As such, much scholarship
and ideas about social policy development derived from the British context. Jones
(1967, p 1), in her introduction to Kaim-Caudle’s text, which was one of the first
modern texts on Irish social policy, notes that ‘for some years, teachers of Social
Administration have been aware that their subject-matter was draw very largely
from the British experience, and have found difficulty in disentangling general
issues of social policy from the peculiar accidents of history and tradition in this
country’. Moreover, as Coughlan (1966, p 205) claimed, that influence was to
Ireland’s detriment because of the United Kingdom (UK) tradition of ‘empirical
“social engineering”’. This offered fragmented and piecemeal grounds for reform,
or a muddling through over any coherent philosophy that articulated clear social
aims for social policy. The second influential factor is the nature of Jones’ so-
called ‘accidents of history and tradition’, infused as they were by Catholic social
thinking and by which, as Garvin (2004, p 3) maintains, ‘the Church attempted
to control, some would say enslave, much of the intellectual and emotional life
of the entire country’.
The Church and social policy analysis

In terms of the prevailing social policy scholarship, Fanning (2008, p 7) refers to
the ‘Catholic clerical-university complex that dominated the Irish social sciences’.
Within the social sciences, social policy’s predecessor, social administration, was
nested within a tradition of applied sociology taught in universities to social
work students that was in turn largely controlled by the Catholic Church. From
the inception of sociology teaching in Irish universities in the 1930s to the late
20th century, Catholic priests dominated teaching appointments in sociology,
with the first lay professorial appointment only occurring in 1971 (Share et al,
2007). Yet, the Church did not have total domination. Other streams of thinking
and education were evident on the periphery, for example, in the People’s
College, Adult Education Association (originally The People’s College for
Continuing Education & Training), promoting workers’ education and founded
by trade unionist Ruaihrí Roberts in 1948 (Conroy, 1999). Its ‘secularism’ posed
enough of a threat to prompt the establishment of a Catholic Workers College
in 1951, subsequently becoming the National College of Ireland.
The main journals offering a ‘social scientific’ analysis of Irish society were
the Catholic journals Christus Rex and Studies. The longer-standing Journal of
the Social and Statistical Inquiry Society of Ireland also pursued ‘social inquiry’. Its
positivist vision of generating scientific facts to have a positive impact on society
and social problems shared the empiricism of Catholic sociology. However, as
Daly (1997) notes, its emphasis during this time was very much on the statistical
34
The evolution of social policy analysis in Ireland
and the economic over the social. There was also some overlap, in actors
involved and topics published, between the journal and Administration, a journal
founded by a group of civil servants in 1953 as part of a public administration
modernisation agenda. Efforts to develop new knowledge and liberal ideas that
broke at least somewhat with religious orthodoxies were also expressed by the
founding of Tuairim, which published pamphlets between 1958 and 1970 on
political, economic and social topics, including a pamphlet on the Aims of Social
Policy: Reform of Ireland’s Social Security and Health Services (Coughlan, 1966).
The influence of economic growth

Institutionally, much was triggered by the impact of Economic Development
(Whitaker, 1958). This was a long time in the making, in terms of changing
ideas coupled with a growing pressure to act in the 1950s (see Chapter Two, this
volume). As Garvin (2004, p 132) puts it, ‘by now everybody was getting into
the game of complaining about the Irish economy’. Yet, Economic Development
did not envisage a programme of related social development and, in terms of
research and knowledge for policy making, the primary concern was the need
for economic data and lack thereof. Social research informing social policy and
the infrastructure required to produce it remained underdeveloped.
However, by the early 1960s there was a sense that Ireland’s economic status was
beginning to improve and that the state of social services also needed improvement.
At the same time, while living standards were increasing, comparisons with
Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK left a sense that the Republic was
behind in terms of social policy and social rights (Dukelow and Considine, 2017).
Ireland’s attempts at joining the European Economic Community (EEC), which
began in the 1960s, also prompted a more outward, comparative mindset. Social
policy thus began to become a more significant political issue over the 1960s.
Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael both professed cautious leftward intentions and began
to compete more on social policy issues. In response, the Labour Party began
to assert its socialism with leader Brendan Corish declaring that ‘the seventies
will be socialist’. Corish’s shift in position was, as Puirséil (2007, p 241) notes,
‘helped immeasurably by the shift in Church teaching under Pope John, whom
Corish later described as “one of the greatest contributors of all change in
Irish attitudes”’.
In this regard, therefore, the theocentric paradigm driving social policy thinking
was also changing in the 1960s, with the Church’s stance on social policy turning
from anti- to pro-state action. As guardedly noted by Fahey (2007, pp 156,
161), the Church shifted ‘towards left of centre’ following the Second Vatican
Council and its thinking became ‘more assertive, sharp edged and committed
to the cause of social justice’. The 1960s therefore witnessed a wider social and
cultural turn in Irish society, marked by rising social activism, both radical and
reformist, that found social policy and the role of the state wanting. Moreover,
this activism and analysis mobilised ideas, issues and values that went beyond
35
Catholic sociology’s purview and assessment of social problems. Among other

issues, urban deprivation and the shortage of corporation housing became an issue
around which housing action groups organised. A range of feminist activisms,
from the long-established Irish Housewives Association to the newly formed
Irish Women’s Liberation Movement, as well as the work of other campaign
groups, also become influential. Examples of the latter included the Campaign
for the Care of Deprived Children, arguing from a perspective of social justice,
not charity. Consequently, aside from the growing expansionary thrust of the
main social services in the 1960s (most notably in education, as discussed in
the following paragraph), policy documents and reports were also published
pertaining to a range of more specific groups and areas of social policy. These
included Travellers, people with intellectual disabilities, older people, children
in residential care, and women.
The broader preoccupations with social research and social policy, however,
rested with how these could serve and complement economic development.
Two developments in the 1960s stand out in particular. The most immediately
impactful of these was the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
Development (OECD) report Investment in Education (1965), marking an early
instance of international influence on Irish social policy making (see Chapters
One and Nine, this volume). In the OECD’s (1991, p 7) later commentary,
the review was hailed as ‘a landmark both in the national and international
memory’, for the strides it made in quantitative methodology and for revealing
so many gaps in education participation. The report reflected new thinking
on education as human capital, chiming with Ireland’s goals for economic
development. The report was a breakthrough for education policy hitherto
focused on maintaining the status quo and substantially controlled by the
Church. As Fanning and Hess (2015, p 43) remark, ‘OECD reports came to
replace the papal encyclicals’. The establishment of the Economic Research
Institute in 1960 also broke with theocentric policy analysis, expanding to
become the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) in 1966. However,
even with its new-found social identity, the ESRI was still, in the words of
its director Michael Fogarty (1969, p 57), ‘slanted towards the problems of
economic growth’ (see Chapter Ten, this volume, for more analysis of the
impact of think tanks on social policy).
In summary, therefore, this period marks the beginnings of the long wane of
the theocentric conditions in how Irish society was conceived, social problems
were debated, and social policy developed. In their place, the foundations of an
econocentric paradigm, generated by both national and international influences,
were already being laid down by the 1960s. This paradigm reflected the primacy
of economic needs, economic analysis and economic actors, in which social
policy plays a subordinate role; at the same time, alternative actors and analysis
appeared by the end of this period.
36
The ‘inequality conscious’ 1970s and crisis-ridden 1980s
Ireland’s ‘rediscovery of poverty’

Building on the turn towards the social, and towards liberal and leftist leanings for
social change, the 1970s, dubbed an ‘inequality conscious’ decade (Sinfield, 1975,
p 6), marked Ireland’s ‘rediscovery of poverty’. This generated a phase of social
policy analysis that focused relatively less on economic growth and relatively more
on issues of distribution. A watershed moment was the publication of research
on poverty by Ó Cinnéide (1972), which was presented at a 1971 conference
on poverty, held in Kilkenny and organised by the Council for Social Welfare
(CSW), a committee of the Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference established in
1970. While attention to poverty and poor housing had been growing in the
media and other circles, Ó Cinnéide’s (1972) research was the first set of ‘hard
facts’ about poverty in modern Ireland and his findings were widely circulated
as the key quantitative reference for poverty in subsequent debate (Dukelow,
2018). The conference was the starting point for sustained attention to poverty
and related social policy analysis by actors including the ESRI, among others
(Walsh, 1972).
The Kilkenny conference galvanised more work on poverty: a working group
committee set up to progress action included members of the CSW, along with
Ó Cinnéide, other social scientists and Donal Nevin, from the Irish Congress
of Trade Unions (ICTU) and a Labour Party activist. Simultaneously, trade
unions were also becoming more involved in campaigning on social policy
issues, exemplified by ICTU’s (1972) Discussion Document on Economic and
Social Development. The working group also made links with activists in the
UK (Sinfield, 1975). One of its immediate outcomes was the publication of
a Statement on Social Policy (CSW, 1972) and while it had some influence on
the 1973–77 Fine Gael–Labour government’s approach to social policy reform,
a longer-lasting influence was Ireland’s successful third attempt to become a
member of EEC in 1973, a point at which the EEC was also becoming more
socially active. This became a new source of reform pressure, initially through the
gender equality directives Ireland was required to comply with, albeit reluctantly.
On the other hand, as Ó Cinnéide (2010) notes, the EEC’s initial efforts to
address the issue of poverty bore the imprint of Irish influence with the launch
of the first European Poverty Programme in 1975.
Advances in conceptualising Irish social policy

Issues of inequality and redistribution were also being deliberated by the National
Economic and Social Council (NESC). The authorship and content of its initial
social policy reports still bore the mark of British influence as NESC looked to
social policy expertise from the UK to generate ideas and analysis. This reflected
the paucity of theoretical and conceptual discussion in the Irish literature as well
37
as the periphery–core relationship typical of many academic disciplines in many

small states with larger neighbours. NESC’s first report on social policy, An
Approach to Social Policy (1975), was written by David Donnison from the London
School of Economics, commissioned to advise on the scope and aims of social
policy and the NESC’s future work. Drawing on Donnison’s report, NESC took
the view that social policy should be understood as more than simply a collection
of services and put questions of distribution and the nature of social relations at
its core. This report was followed with a set of reports culminating in Irish Social
Policies: Priorities for Future Development (NESC, 1981), which articulated six
key aims of Irish social policy, focusing on the reduction of wealth and income
inequalities; equality of opportunity; ‘provision of employment for those seeking
work’; access for all to services; provision for particular disadvantaged groups;
and ‘the development of responsible citizenship’ (NESC, 1981, pp 15–16). These
reports progressed understanding about the nature of social policy in a way that
had not been previously broached in Irish policy discourse.
The reassertion of economic issues

The translation of many of these advances in social policy analysis into concrete
policy reforms was halted by Ireland’s disastrous pro-cyclical policy response
to the 1979 oil crisis and by the rise in unemployment and national debt that
followed in the 1980s. The state of the economy and the need for economic
growth returned to the centre of policy concerns. It is notable, however, that
some of the threads of 1970s developments continued. A second Kilkenny
conference in 1981 kept poverty on the policy agenda. The first and, to date,
only comprehensive review of the social welfare system was commissioned in
1983 and reported in 1986, the same year as the establishment of the Combat
Poverty Agency (CPA), which had a mandate to research and promote the
abolition of poverty. However, its establishment was the result of the controversial
closure in 1980 of the local anti-poverty projects operating under the European
Anti-Poverty Programme (EAPP) because of the threat they posed to the
status quo. As Brown (1982, p 150) notes, ‘even the limited Irish programme
excited the active opposition of bishops, business men and politicians because
it sought to stress the powerlessness of the poor and their right to acquire and
use power’. Elsewhere, in 1989, the ESRI published the first national survey of
poverty (Callan et al, 1989), marking the start of ESRI researchers’ significant
contribution to conceptualising and measuring poverty, and to anti-poverty
policy in Ireland and the EEC. The 1980s also saw the emergence of other
social policy agencies. These included the National Council for the Aged
(1981, subsequently becoming, by 1997, the National Council on Ageing and
Older People). Among the NGO sector, notable developments included the
establishment of the Irish National Organisation of the Unemployed in 1987,
giving voice to the lived experience of unemployed people and reflecting the
severity of unemployment in the 1980s.
38
In addition to the Report of the Commission on Social Welfare (Commission

on Social Welfare, 1986), several other documents were produced addressing
neglected areas of social policy, including reports on psychiatric services, older
people, Travellers, people with disabilities, and young people. While the scope
of social policy concerns thus continued to expand and to recognise a greater
range of social needs, a consistent theme shared by the outcome of these reports
was a lack of implementation. While this was to a large degree attributable to
economic exigencies, the 1980s also marked new strains of neoliberal discourse
about the welfare state. Yet, whereas Thatcherite thinking had a much deeper
effect on social policy in the UK, the 1987 turn to social partnership as a mode
of policy making modified its growth in Ireland. Social partnership also became,
by the 1990s, a new conduit for the input of civil society expertise into social
policy analysis and formation (see Chapters Ten and Twelve, this volume).
Abundant but how embedded? Social policy analysis from the

1990s to the late 2000s
The development of the discipline

The mid-1990s to the mid-2000s mark an expansionary period on many
fronts. The growth of social policy as an academic discipline was marked by
the restructuring of more all-encompassing social science departments in
many universities, with social policy being rehomed in departments bearing
the discipline in their titles (in University College Dublin and Trinity College
Dublin), or in departments of applied social studies (in University College Cork
and Maynooth University). The expansion of the subject at postgraduate level
in particular provided more opportunities for professional development in social
policy research and a break with the tradition of completing PhDs abroad. The
growth of research capacity was also bolstered by a phase of investment generating
new research institutes within higher education. Social policy concerns typically
found a space in more all-encompassing social science institutes, reflecting the still
limited funding environment for specialised social research inquiry. With these
developments, social policy as an applied discipline broke at least somewhat with
its entangled association with sociology. An Irish Social Policy Association was
founded in 1997 with a small cohort of social policy academics and researchers in
social policy-related organisations. Irish social policy texts also began to emerge,
providing a more distinctive Irish perspective on social policy and breaking
with the reliance on British literature (Kiely et al, 1999; Quin et al, 1999;
Considine and Dukelow, 2009). The presence of Ireland as case-study material
in comparative research also emerged, bringing Ireland out from the shadow of
the UK welfare state and highlighting its distinctive, hybrid features (McLaughlin,
1993; Cousins, 1997).
The range of areas covered under social policy analysis also widened, branching
out from a focus on social services and poverty, and representing greater
39
specialisation in particular issues and stages over the life course, and the new social
issues reflecting a globalising society, in particular migration, racism, integration
and multiculturalism. Yet, as a small country, these developments remained small
in scale in terms of the community of scholars and the relative lack of diversity
in methodologies and theoretical perspectives, with a continued focus on applied
research and post-positivist approaches. This is not necessarily unusual for a
discipline such as social policy, which has a strong focus on analysis for policy
and strong ties with the policy-making agendas that come with this terrain.
However, it also meant that even in this expansionary period there was relatively
little development of alternative streams of scholarship and research located
in interpretive and critical paradigms, or pursuing conceptual and theoretical
innovation. Equally, little diversity of methods meant relatively little research
utilising participatory methods or focusing on the lived experience.
Research on the history of Irish social policy also began to emerge, including
perspectives that looked more critically on the role of the Catholic Church
(Powell, 1992). The critical rethinking and exposure of the role of the
Catholic Church became increasingly important over this period, leading to
the establishment of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse (CICA) in
1999, reporting in 2009 and commonly known as the Ryan report (CICA,
2009). In this case, the role of the media in highlighting lived experience and
personal testimony was hugely significant. Particularly notable were the television
documentary Dear Daughter (1996), focusing on the experiences of Christine
Buckley whose childhood was spent in Goldenbridge orphanage in Dublin,
and the later series, States of Fear (1999), produced by journalist Mary Raftery,
investigating the wider history of the abuse in industrial and reformatory schools.
The growing internationalisation of Irish social policy analysis was also
a significant feature of this period. This was marked by the growing role of
the European Union (EU) in social policy making, the expansion of OECD
reporting on areas of social policy, and the Irish ratification of several United
Nations (UN) human rights covenants/conventions. Domestically, the growth of
civil society organisations and their inclusion in policy-making processes through
social partnership was a notable development, while the growth of ‘agencification’
provided another outlet for social policy research and analysis (see Chapters Four,
Five and Ten, this volume).
Deepening internationalisation
As Mary C. Murphy (see Chapter Nine, this volume) notes, deepening
internationalisation of Irish social policy analysis was noticeably Europeanised
by the step change in the EU’s remit and interest in social policy, originating
with its commitment to ‘combating exclusion’ in the Maastricht Treaty in 1992
and culminating with the adoption of the Open Method of Coordination in
20001. Yet, as with earlier phases of EU–Irish relations, a two-way process of
influence was at play here, with the EU adoption of plans against poverty and
40
later plans for social inclusion influenced in part by the 1997 Irish National
Action Plan against Poverty. While still a light regime in contrast to the power
behind economic policy instruments and institutions, the lexicon of EU social
policy and anti-poverty targets certainly became more salient in national analysis.
More fundamentally, the development of poverty data collection, starting with
the European Community Household Panel in 1994 and transforming into the
European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions survey by 2003,
provided much-needed regular data on poverty in Ireland. For the civil society
sector engaged in social policy analysis, the Europeanisation of poverty and social
inclusion policy provided much leverage in terms of social policy discourse,
evaluation requirements and outcomes as well as new spaces for airing analysis.
Yet the continued lack of emphasis on the importance of lived experience,
regardless of the actors involved, is a recurring thread from earlier periods.
A greater focus on rights, equality and discrimination was another element of
the influence of internationalisation. This encompassed the ratification of UN
rights treaties, to the implementation of anti-discrimination provisions stemming
from the EU’s Treaty of Amsterdam. The leverage these developments offered
for a rights-based analysis of social policy was particularly potent in light of
Ireland’s historical leaning via the Catholic Church on notions of deservingness
and subsidiarity. In this context, the founding of the Equality Authority (EA)
in 2000 stands out in particular for promoting equality in policy analysis. As
Baker and colleagues (2015, p 183) note, it ‘adopted an expansive understanding
of its mandate’, bringing attention in its reports to the lesbian, gay, bisexual
and transgender (LGBT) community, older people, carers and Travellers, and
furthering a research agenda on data on inequality with the CPA and the Central
Statistics Office.
Growing agencification
The EA was just one of a greatly expanding set of agencies (see Chapter Four,
this volume). Thus, intertwined to some extent with the growing reach and
influence of international actors on Irish social policy, an equally significant trend
for social policy analysis was the growth of agencification (Quinn, 2008). A major
expansion in the number of agencies created in specific areas of social policy
occurred, reflecting the growing extensity of social policy-related legislation,
reports and strategies (particularly notable in health, education, disability and
children), and the growing range and complexity of policy interventions in
these areas. The increasing focus on social policy issues in social partnership
processes and the inclusion of the Community and Voluntary Pillar also played a
role. In addition to NESC, CPA and EA, other agencies created with a notable
research and social policy analysis role included the National Economic and
Social Forum (NESF) (1993), the National Consultative Committee on Racism
and Interculturalism (NCCRI) (1998), the Irish Human Rights Commission
(2000)2, and the National Disability Authority (2000). The related expansion
41
in ESRI activity (which since the late 1980s had to rely less on grant-in-aid
funding and more on contract work) reflected a range of research commissioned
by such agencies as well as government departments, in areas such as educational
inequality, labour market inequalities, racism and discrimination.
NGOs evolved on a parallel track, with new organisations and alliances
emerging, adding to, and sometimes duplicating, the work of the already large
and diverse field reflecting Ireland’s mixed economy of welfare. Indicative
new organisations included the Children’s Rights Alliance (1995) and the
Immigrant Council of Ireland (2001) (see Chapter Twelve, this volume). Again,
international rights discourses and obligations of the Irish state in terms of policy
implementation and reporting activities provided new impetus for NGOs. Many
were to also occupy spaces opening in social partnership processes and associated
bodies such as NESF and NESC, affording new opportunities to contribute to
and influence policy analysis. This occurred against the backdrop of increasing
interest in the voluntary sector internationally for its contribution to more
pluralistic policy making (McCashin et al, 2002). However, throughout the social
partnership period, this remained a contested area and a source of conflict and
ambivalence for many voluntary actors, who would have to engage as less than
equal partners (Larragy, 2014).
In short, the landscape of social policy analysis had changed beyond all
recognition since the 1980s, and overall the period might be characterised by
the word abundance. Ireland experienced major socioeconomic change and
became more open, more wealthy and more diverse. In this context, along with
the basic fact that more resources were available for social policy analysis, there
was a huge expansion of issues on the social policy agenda and major growth in
actors and infrastructure at multiple levels, while social issues and social needs
previously neglected gained recognition through a multitude of social policy
reports and some action. However, while it was a period of abundance, the
question lingers as to how embedded these more expansive elements of social
policy analysis were. Despite the growth of the social, the dominant policy
agendas that articulated Ireland’s ‘actually existing neoliberalism’ (Brenner and
Theodore, 2002) focused on economic growth and competitiveness, though they
were perhaps less in conflict with basic improvements in social policy during a
time of plenty. It is also notable that a retraction of state engagement with and
support of actors who were more critical of Ireland’s model precedes the more
recent austerity period and can be traced back to the early 2000s (Kelleher and
O’Neill, 2018). The limits of the period are reflected in a telling analysis by
NESC in its landmark report on the Irish welfare state, The Developmental Welfare
State (2005). NESC noted a deepening dualism in the structure of Irish social
policy, that is, a basic divide between a growing majority able access private
services above and beyond ‘very basic levels of public service provision’ on which
a significant minority s depend (NESC, 2005, p 163). At the same time, NESC’s
analysis had also shifted significantly since its early reports, with its conception
and promotion of the developmental welfare state reflecting the social investment
42
paradigm now being promoted by European social policy actors, and which is at
heart an econocentric justification of social policy. The more direct dominance
of econocentric conditions were to return to Ireland in the most recent period
of social policy analysis, which is briefly considered in the concluding section.
Conclusion
Ireland’s turbulent times since the 2008 economic crisis have been well rehearsed.
In the domain of social policy analysis, harsher econocentric conditions reasserted
themselves on many fronts and the economic bottom line returned to the centre
of policy analysis and evaluation. The increasing reliance on private and external
funding in higher education has created a more precarious and competitive
environment for the production of social policy research. An equally damaging
trend has been what Baker and colleagues (2015) call ‘cutting back on equality’,
whereby several social policy agencies had their budgets severely cut. Agencies
focusing on minority groups, such as the NCCRI and the CPA, or with a
tradition of dissenting analysis (such as the EA), were abolished outright or
merged with other agencies. This is not to say that all critical analysis has
disappeared. Ireland’s period of austerity has also generated a more critical turn
in social policy analysis and scholarship, not least in areas such as housing and
social protection, as well as a notable turn to the lived experience. On the
other hand, agencies and modes of analysis focused on economic evaluation
and value for money have advanced, including the Irish Government Economic
and Evaluation Service and the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council, both of which
were established in 2012 (see Chapters Four and Eight, this volume). External
influences on social policy analysis that focus on the economic value and the
cost of social policy have grown in weight, most directly with the institution of
new fiscal rules and governance structure around the reformed EU Stability and
Growth Pact3. While by the mid-2010s the country appeared to be entering a
‘recovery’ phase, these are the legacies that continue to weigh on social policy
analysis in post-austerity Ireland.
In conclusion, the survey of more than half a century of social policy analysis
has demonstrated significant change, paralleling Ireland’s relatively intense waves
of economic and social transformation over a comparatively compact period of
modernisation. Modern social policy analysis emerged from a context dominated
by Catholic social teaching and social action and was propelled forward both
by the way in which economic development revealed the limits of Ireland’s
social services and by the range of actors highlighting inequalities, injustices
and state neglect of many groups. As the theocentric context underpinning
social policy analysis faded, an econocentric context took its place, essentially
subordinating the social to the economic in terms of the role and benefits of
social policy, but not always to the same degree of tension. The social landscape
and the importance of social policy undoubtedly changed as Ireland evolved into
a substantially wealthier, more open and more liberal society by the 1990s and
43
into the 21st century, with a growing range and types of analyses of and for social
policy, reflecting increasingly complex societal challenges. The range of actors and
levels of analysis also extended with greater interplay between the national and
the international in how social policy issues are conceived and analysed. Yet at
the same time, while the nature and drivers of econocentric paradigm also evolve,
it continues to have a significant bearing on the nature of social policy analysis.
Notes
1 A form of co-ordinating social policy across EU member states by co-operatively agreeing and
monitoring social policy developments, targets and outcomes.
2 By 2013, in the context of austerity, the Irish Human Rights Commission and the EA were
dissolved and had their functions transferred to the newly formed Irish Human Rights and
Equality Commission.
3 As a method of EU economic governance, the reformed Stability and Growth Pact, strengthened
the European Commission’s powers of budgetary and fiscal surveillance and discipline of EU
member states, ultimately resulting in the further subordination of social policy objectives.
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46
FOUR
The changing policy analysis

capacity of the Irish state
Muiris MacCarthaigh
Introduction
One of the paradoxes of modern government is that although there has never
been as much data and evidence available to inform policy making as there is
today, the solutions to the policy problems faced by governments appear more,
rather than less, elusive. In part, this is a reflection of the changing nature of
citizen expectation of the state, the growing number of ‘actors’ in all policy
arenas, and greater recognition of the interdependence between complex
policy problems and the mix of solutions required to address them. It remains
the case, however, that the weight of responsibility for solving public policy
problems rests with political executives, who in turn rely on the capacity of their
administrations to present policy options to them. And so the quality of citizen’s
lives and experiences of government is heavily dependent on the ability of those
administrative systems to recognise, understand and formulate policies that address
the problems prioritised by their political masters.
The issue of policy analysis is the subject of much academic interest given
that, as Lasswell (1970) identified, it is concerned with producing knowledge
about policy as well as for policy. Beginning in the period after the Second
World War with work by Lindblom (1959), Deutsch (1966), Heclo (1974) and
others who sought to better understand the policy process within the public
realm, today a variety of models abound to help us understand how and why
those in positions of authority (politicians and top bureaucrats) choose to find
and use evidence to make judgments on policy options and implement them
(see Petridou, 2014 for an overview). For governments, policy analysis carries
heavy normative and ideological significance as it involves judgments about
what society and the economy should do and how citizens should live and
experience public services.
Our understanding of how the role of policy analysis in government has
developed mirrors the study of policy analysis more generally. For example,
Van Nispen and Scholten (2016) propose that the performance of policy analysis
has evolved through four stages, following a continuum that begins with a focus
on a logic of consequence towards today’s logic of appropriateness. The first
stage was concerned with policy that could be implemented, and paid little
47
heed to social research. In the second stage, as implementation studies took

hold, issues of political as well as technical feasibility came to be recognised,
and social acceptance of policy solutions emerged alongside the emergence of
policy legitimacy. The third stage involved the engagement of a wider range of
actors (and therefore interests) in the policy analysis process, which in turn led to
contestation over not just the nature of the problem and the potential solutions,
but also the assumptions underlying these proposals. Finally, the authors propose
a more recent ‘argumentative’ turn that emphases the role of symbolism and
rhetoric and the search for agreement between interests.
The 2008 global financial crisis has presented a unique window of opportunity
to more closely study these changes in approaches to policy analysis in the
developed world, as the scale of that crisis points to great failings in policy
foresight and planning among the world’s wealthiest nations. And in the case of
Ireland, the issue of policy analysis in the civil service has emerged as a one of
particular salience and attention, resulting in some important reforms documented
in several chapters in this volume. To examine these reforms and explore the
issue of policy analysis further, this chapter begins by considering the origins and
evolution of the Irish civil service as the core of the state’s administration, before
considering the place of policy analysis within it. Following this, the chapter looks
at the development of policy analysis capacity through organisational means, and
specifically through a greater use of state agencies. Reforms that have been made
in the context of the crisis to improve the capacity of the state administration
to undertake policy analysis are then considered, as well as the drivers for that
enhancement: risk, expenditure and politics. The chapter draws on interviews
with a number of senior civil servants with experience of working in a variety
of public policy domains.
Context
Policy analysis capacity within the Irish state has traditionally been dependent on
the skills and ability of the civil service, the core of the core of the wider Irish
public service. With just over 40,000 people employed in the civil service as of
2018, it forms approximately 12% of the wider public service (excluding those
employed in commercial state-owned enterprises). The origin of the Irish civil
service dates from the formal transfer of administrative services from British to
Irish control in April 1922, following the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty’s provision
(Article 17) that the British government would ‘take the steps necessary to
transfer to [the Provisional Government] the powers and machinery requisite
for the discharge of its duties…’.
The structure and organisation of the new Irish civil service did not depart from
the established Whitehall administrative model. It was designed to be an apolitical
and generalist administrative service, with permanent tenure for staff selected
on merit through open competition, institutionalised through the creation of
the independent Civil Service Commissioners in 1926. The Weberian systems
48
The changing policy analysis capacity of the Irish state
of ‘grades’ was retained for the purposes of organisation and remuneration, and
by 1966 Finlay suggested that there were over 1,000 such grades across the civil
service (Finlay, 1966, p 27).
The civil service was organised into clusters called departments. Each
department had a responsible minister at the top and a pyramid of hierarchically
organised civil servants below. The top civil servant (originally named a ‘Secretary’
and later ‘Secretary-General’) was the principal conduit of policy advice to the
minister, and the key formal channel of communication between ministers and
their departmental civil servants.
The term ‘civil servant’ was ambiguous within the new state.1 A distinction
was made between the civil servants of the government and the civil service
of the state. The latter comprises a small proportion of the civil service and
consists of those working in a variety of public agencies that are independent of
government. These include, for example, the Oireachtas (parliament), the Office
of the Ombudsman, and the Office of the Comptroller and Auditor General.
Rather, the focus of the chapter is on the departmental civil service, that is, those
working within ministries for which a cabinet minister of the cabinet is directly
responsible to parliament.
Definition of the term civil service was avoided until the Civil Service
Commissioners Act 1956 stated that the civil service ‘means the civil service
of the Government and the civil service of the State’. Those employed as Irish
civil servants have thus ranged from tax collectors, to marine biologists and
archaeologists employed within departments, to those appointed as special
advisers to ministers. And prior to 1984 almost half of those employed in the
civil service were involved in the Department of Posts and Telegraphs, that is,
responsible for postal and telecommunications services.2
The legal principal of ‘corporation sole’ as set out in the Ministers and
Secretaries Act 1924 determined that the minister was politically responsible
for all actions of their department. It consequently ensured that senior staff
were consistently engaged in, rather than detached from, the minutiae of policy
detail for which their minister had to account. The inability of senior civil
servants to fully divorce themselves from day-to-day issues of management and
policy oversight has been a central feature of periodic reviews of the civil service
since the late 1960s. Such a divorce would not be without costs, however,
including the loss of certain policy expertise. And though the lack of absence
of more strategic policy development within the Irish civil service is routinely
lamented, the experience Irish civil servants develop over their careers in the
management of policy from inception to implementation would be highly prized
in other more technocratic administrative systems.
Although policy analysis is certainly a skill required by the civil service, with an
expectation that improvement in the practice of this skill will enhance promotional
opportunities, it has not traditionally been recognised as a prerequisite for entry
to the service. As one interviewee reflected:
49
‘In a lot of the changes in recruitment over the years, it would be

more explicit that people should have the range of operational but
also … policy-making capacity and be able to demonstrate that. And
it would be one of the competencies for any interview and I think
you would not get to a senior level without being able to demonstrate
capacity to do that….’ (Interview B, 2019)
However, as the tasks of government have grown, alongside the requirement for
better information and evidence to justify public policy actions, the demands
for more sophisticated policy analysis within the civil service have been building
for some time. Before considering the recent, post-crisis, developments, it is
necessary to consider the emergence of policy analysis as a skill within the Irish
civil service.
Origins: policy analysis in the Irish civil service

In late 2014, following an extensive internal consultation process, the Irish
government published The Civil Service Renewal Plan. Signed by all Secretaries-
General (the most senior grade in the service) as well as the Taoiseach, the
plan opened with the statement that the civil service ‘exists as an independent,
impartial body to serve the State and the people of Ireland by carrying out the
work of Government and delivering public services efficiently and effectively’
(Government of Ireland, 2014, p 5).3
This brief and general statement of the role of the civil service portrays it in a
particular way: as the agent of government charged with implementing the will
of its political principal. In fact, this Wilsonian perspective masks the fact that
the Irish civil service has had, since its inception, a crucial role in helping the
executive to come to a decision about what public services it wants to deliver,
and how to deliver them. In achieving this, the performance of policy analysis is
an integral part of a civil servant’s role, although rarely specified.
As mentioned earlier, the Irish civil service fits within the Whitehall model
of public administration. Apart from its non-partisan and merit-based system
of appointment and promotion, this globally recognised model is characterised
by its use of vertically organised ‘grades’, which do not necessarily describe
what those within the grades do, but which provide for a system of superior–
subordinate relationships in the performance of complex public tasks. This form
of organisation is commonly linked with the ideal-type rational/legal bureaucracy
proposed by Weber (1947). This type of organisational form involves:
• fixed spheres of competence;

• a defined hierarchy of offices;
• specialisation and expertise in discrete areas;
• management through the application of a developing set of rules, knowledge
of which is the special technical competence of the officials concerned.
50
Vertical progression within such a system required ever-better understanding of

the rules and more competence in the performance of the requisite skills. In the
case of the civil service, the ability to analyse and understand a policy problem,
and present viable solutions to that problem that take into account the range of
actors and interests that may affect their implementation, is a prized skill. And,
of course, civil services are expected to perform their tasks in a manner that is
accountable to their political masters, and by extension the public.
The sources of information for policy analysis within the civil service were
rudimentary, with emphasis placed on experience of personal knowledge rather
than active engagement with outside parties. The Central Statistics Office (CSO),
an important source of basic data, was established as an independent office in 1949
(see Chapter Five, this volume). And in a system that relied on incrementalism
rather than policy innovation, the audit reports of the Office of the Comptroller
and Auditor General was another source of (financial) data. Otherwise, civil
servants relied on an elaborate system of internal records or ‘files’, as inherited
from the British system (Tough and Lihoma, 2012) to provide an evidence base
for policy analysis.
By the 1960s, and in tandem with developments in peer civil service systems
including those of Australia and the UK, greater emphasis began to be placed
on distinguishing between the policy development and policy implementation
tasks of government. Or to use the argot of the time, between administrative
work (deliberation on and development of policy) and executive work (which
was concerned with implementation, and more easily measurable).
The ‘Swedish’ model of administrative organisation came into vogue. This
model was based on a division between small ministries shorn of executive
work and multiple, separate (and often larger) agencies that engaged in the
execution of ministerial policy that often involved more routine, repetitive,
transactional work. The argument for such a model was that it offered ministries
the advantage of compactness, short communication lines, and the ability to
concentrate on strategic questions and, crucially, allowed the minister to engage
solely in the political side of governing without having to worry about details
of implementation.
In the UK, the seminal report in 1968 of the British Committee on the
Civil Service (or Fulton Committee [1968]) was influenced by this new wave
of thinking, and made the separation of policy making from administrative
duties one of its central recommendations. The Fulton report paved the way for
Margaret’s Thatcher’s famous Next Steps programme of public sector reform,
the centrepiece of which was the establishment of multiple arm’s-length agencies
designed to implement ministerial policies.
In Ireland, in tandem with a review of the Constitution established in 1966
and only a month after the creation of the Fulton Committee, the Lemass
government established a Public Service Organisation Review Group under the
chairmanship of Liam St. J. Devlin. Having regard to ‘the growing responsibilities
of government’ its remit was,
51
… to examine and report on the organisation of the Departments of

State at the higher levels, including the appropriate distribution of
functions as between both Departments themselves and Departments
and other bodies. (Public Services Organisation Review Group,
1969, p 3)
Its final report was a substantial one, replete with criticisms of the existing
system and proposals for widespread reform of the service, based on two
underlying principles:
• a greater emphasis on policy making, as distinction from administration;

and
• the need for greater integration and coordination across the public service.
The report highlighted the burden of administrative work falling on ministers

and higher civil servants, and its blueprint for change recommended a new
division between civil service activities that were subject to political direction
and control, and those that could be left to more independent executive units
working through agreed systems towards policy objectives. It was proposed
that this would be achieved by means of the division of each government
department along policy development and execution lines. The policy-making
core of the department (the Aireacht) would assume responsibility for strategy,
subject to the minister and government’s approval. The remainder of the
department would engage in policy implementation, and be organised via
executive agencies.
The Devlin report also recommended the establishment of a new department
to focus on reform of the public service, and although a Department of Public
Service was created in 1973, it became absorbed with industrial relations issues.
Apart from the Department of Social Welfare, Devlin’s Aireacht-based model did
not take root across the service, but the idea of institutionally separating policy
from administration has remained an ambition of calls for reform since.
However, there is evidence of an increased concentration of civil servants
involved in policy-making activities happening over time. A snapshot of the
proportion of those civil servants occupying what are considered to be policy-
making positions (Secretary-General, Assistant Secretary-General, Principal
Officer and Assistant Principal) as a proportion of the total non-industrial civil
service4 population identifies an increase from approximately 1% to almost 10%
over 60 years (Figure 4.1). The reasons for this expansion cannot be explained
here, but undoubtedly are connected to the growth in managerialist practices and
associated skills demands, greater functional and personnel-related responsibilities,
and general career advancement pressures.
52
Figure 4.1: Percentage of civil servants at higher grade (from Assistant Principal)
9.8
7.1
5
4
1.8 2
1.1
1957 1967 1977 1987 1997 2007 2017

Source: Hardiman and MacCarthaigh (2010, p 377), updated
Agencies and policy analysis capacity

In the decades following the Devlin report, and framed by Ireland’s deepening
engagement in the EU and its policy demands (see Chapter Nine, this volume),
the Irish state grew in size and scope. This was most visibly manifest in the
mushrooming of a wide variety of miscellaneous ‘agencies’ alongside departments,
using names such as Board, Commission, Authority and Council (MacCarthaigh,
2012a, 2012b). Many of these agencies performed policy analysis and advisory
roles, which in turn fed into ‘parent’ departments, but the Irish experience of
what is known as ‘agencification’ was not, as elsewhere, a deliberate attempt to
separate policy making from implementation (as envisaged by the Devlin report,
mentioned earlier). Rather, it occurred in an ad-hoc manner with new functions
being assigned to new organisations, and several undertaking their own policy
analysis work, albeit not formally required to do so in their mandate.
Figure 4.2 identifies the year-on-year aggregate growth in the number of public
bodies in Ireland, with a particular acceleration from the early 1990s onwards,
and peaking in 2008. This growth was largely driven by the creation of ‘arm’s-
length’ agencies or ‘quangos’, each with its own variety of policy, financial and
functional autonomy from its parent department. The growth in state agency
numbers reflects the increasing range of service delivery and regulatory tasks
performed by the Irish government. They were also manifestations of shifts in
the organisational mode of the state’s response to these new policy demands
and the opening up of policy making to incorporate non-state interests through
advisory bodies and representative councils. From 2008 onwards, there was a
decline and gradual stabilisation in the number of agencies for the first time in
the state’s history.
53
Figure 4.2: Public organisations in Ireland, 1922–2015

400
2008 financial crisis
350
300
250
200
150
100
50
0
3
6
9
2
5
8
1
4
7
0
3
6
9
2
5
8
1
4
7
0
3
6
9
2
5
8
1
4
7
0
192
192
192
193
193
193
194
194
194
195
195
195
195
196
196
196
197
197
197
198
198
198
198
199
199
199
200
200
200
201
Source: Hardiman et al (2019), www.isad.ie
Several of these organisations, such as Forfás (the national policy advisory board
for enterprise, trade, science, technology and innovation, established in 1994) and
the National Competitiveness Council (1997), were primarily concerned with
the generation and analysis of data on sectors of Irish society and economy. Many
others, such as the Road Safety Authority (2006) and the Pensions Authority
(2014), produced new data as a by-product of fulfilling their remit, which then
fed into political system directly (via parent departments) or indirectly (via media
reporting). Despite the restrictions imposed post-2008 on the creation of such
agencies, the range and volume of information produced by existing organisations
created new challenges in term of policy overlap and coordination, as well as
the challenge of turning it into policy action given a centralised political system.
Post-crisis policy analysis

A series of post-crisis reports into the Irish banking sector and regulatory system
(Honohan, 2010; Nyberg, 2011; Regling and Watson, 2010) all acknowledged
the international dimension to the Irish crisis, but also pointed to domestic
factors as playing a significant contributory role. These ranged from institutional
failings in corporate governance standards and prudential regulation, to wider
socio-cultural issues concerning ‘group-think’ and herd mentalities that left little
room for dissenting voices or ‘contrarians’ pointing to the fatal flaws within the
Irish property market and banking system to be heard.
In reaction, the post-crisis policy-making environment in Ireland has witnessed
experimentation with several forms of citizen and interest group engagement
in the policy process, most explicitly citizens’ assemblies (Farrell et al, 2019; see
54
also Chapter Fifteen, this volume). As one interviewee put it: “I think there has,
post crisis, clearly been an effort to more consciously be open to external voices
and criticisms and some of the group-think type critiques” (Interview B, 2019).
The same interviewee suggested that in the context of warnings about the Irish
economy not being heeded prior to 2008, “… the civil service, post-crisis, is
probably a bit more conscious of the need to record evidence-based views about
decisions that are being taken … and record facts”.
Similarly, a claim that the civil service had diminished or outsourced its policy
analysis capacity was also made in the context of the increased use of consultancies
to provide policy advice in the years prior to the crisis. The same interviewee
suggested that:
‘… there’s been an effort to step away from consultancies [because one]

of the criticisms was that we had outsourced too much to consultancy
reports. It may be creeping back in a bit, but … under the Enda Kenny
government he would have been very strong [in saying] “You should
be able to develop this expertise yourselves.”’ (Interview B, 2019)
An important institutional development to address this issue has been the

creation of the Irish Government Economic and Evaluation Service (IGEES)
(see Chapters Five and Eight, this volume). Its emergence followed criticism of
the Department of Finance specifically (Wright, 2010) and more generally the
strategic planning and capacity skills of the Irish government (Christensen, 2013;
IGEES, 2016). Commenting on its creation, one official working within IGEES
put it that post-crisis there was a “realisation that across the civil service there
wasn’t sufficient policy expertise to drive the principles of value for money and
do policy analysis that would inform policymaking and policy implementation”
(Interview A, 2019). Officials interviewed by MacCarthaigh (2017, p 206)
pointed to IGEES as having had a substantive role in improving the quality of
their policy deliberations from early on in its inception:
‘… I think [IGEES] has been very useful in terms of addressing some

of the issues in the Wright Report on the Department of Finance …
around the kind of internal capacity [for] analysis [and] promoting
a kind of plurality of views, you know, and avoiding the emergence
of … groupthink or complacency around certain things.’ (Department
of Public Expenditure and Reform official)
‘I think [IGEES is] likely to change a lot of the way we do things

over time. It’ll take time to bed in. I just see more and more of it now
at management board level and when we’re trying to look at new
things…. And I think that evaluation culture … is going to become
quite important if it really beds down, as it seems to be starting to
do….’ (Department of Finance official)
55
An Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) review

of IGEES published in 2019 also found that it has made a ‘significant difference
in strengthening the analytical capacity of the Civil Service in Ireland’ (OECD,
2019, p 8). Other institutional innovations designed to improve the quality
of policy analysis through challenging government economic and budgetary
proposals include the creation of the independent Irish Fiscal Advisory Council
and the Parliamentary Budget Office (see Chapter Eight, this volume).
Drivers of policy analysis in the civil service

Policy analysis involves a variety of data sources, motivations and pressures. In
this final section, three important influences on the Irish civil service’s policy
analysis function are considered: risk, expenditure and politics.
Risk-driven policy analysis

Contemporary policy analysis in the Irish civil service has been influenced by
the desire for more active engagement with external bodies with a view to risk
analysis and associated planning. An important initiative in this regard has been
the annual publication since 2013 of a National Risk Assessment. This “… is again
an effort to more openly say these are risks and listen and talk externally and
validate what we think might be risks facing the country, in a way again that’s
not always comfortable for our political system” (Interview B, 2019).
Again reflecting the desire to address perceived shortcomings in policy
development prior to the crisis, the National Risk Assessment seeks to:
… counteract ‘group think’ and to ensure all voices are heard

by Government. It seeks to prevent a repeat of the mistakes of
the past, when dissenting voices were not heeded, leading to
catastrophic consequences for the country. It has helped stimulate a
national conversation about risk that takes place at every level from
private citizens to civil society groups, industry and public bodies.
(Government of Ireland, 2018, p 4)
When interviewed about the National Risk Assessment report, one official noted
the positive effect it had in developing system-wide awareness of challenges facing
the state in the mid- to long term:
‘I wouldn’t exaggerate its influence. But then from where we were in

of not doing anything like this to having a government-led process
to say “What do we think are risks facing the country?” And it starts
by asking departments what’s in their sphere of thinking. And [as] it’s
written up [and] goes to government it’s published for consultation
[and] we ask for views of external stakeholders. We generally have
56
a seminar or we ask people to come along and to give a sense [of]

are we picking up the right things or are we capturing the right
things? We did a look-back exercise last year [and] it was one of the
first official government documents to highlight Brexit for example.’
(Interview B, 2019)
Expenditure-driven policy analysis

Prior to the 2008 crisis, Irish public spending grew at a rapid, and ultimately
unsustainable, pace. As part of the post-crisis cutbacks, the new coalition
government elected in 2011 undertook two ‘root-and-branch’ comprehensive
reviews of expenditure, in 2011 and 2014. The first led to the publication of the
Comprehensive Expenditure Report 2012–14 (Department of Public Expenditure
and Reform, 2011) in December 2011 alongside the coalition’s first Budget, for
the calendar year 2012. The report represented a detailed analysis and assessment
of all programmes of expenditure across all government departments, with
each also tasked with identifying policy options for savings (MacCarthaigh and
Hardiman, 2017).
The second report, Comprehensive Expenditure Report 2015–2017 (Department
of Public Expenditure and Reform, 2014) and an associated plan for capital
investment were published in October 2014 as part of Budget 2015. In line with
the reformed public spending code, the report set out multi-annual expenditure
ceilings for all ‘votes’ for each of the years 2015, 2016 and 2017. In 2017, a
different ‘spending review’ process began, although again with a three-year time
frame to assist budgetary planning to 2020. As part of this process, departments
are required to produce background papers that set out scenarios and justifications
for increases in spending for the period in question. Interviews also indicate that
the Department of Finance has become more engaged in scenario modelling and
forecasting using macro-economic indicators.
Also, following a pilot exercise in 2011, a new performance reporting system
was introduced across all areas of public expenditure in 2012 (Department
of Public Expenditure and Reform, 2019, p 1). The purpose was to more
closely align public spending with policy objectives, and involved reformatting
budgetary documents to make these connections more explicit, particularly
for parliamentarians. An independent review published in 2016 had been
quite critical of the lack of performance-based debate and discussion within
parliamentary committees, and had recommended greater use of performance
information as part of expenditure decision making (OECD, 2016).
There is also a strong European dimension to expenditure-based policy
analysis, and one interviewee noted that as part of the European budgetary
semester process:
‘… the European Commission [come] over here they ask questions

about what you’re doing in different areas of policy. They make
57
recommendations and you have to respond to those recommendations.

It’s an iterative process but … it’s a European input to policy making.’
(Interview B, 2019)
The expenditure-focused nature of much policy analysis work, and particularly by

IGEES, naturally stirs wider debate about the provision of rights-based rather than
budgetary-based provision of services and benefits, and the bases on which issue
of national economic and social development are decided. Thus, the political
‘framing’ of policy decisions and the use of discourse to justify expenditure
decisions comes into focus, which is the final influence considered here (see also
Chapter Seventeen, this volume).
Politics and data analysis

Policy analysis in government is laden with political considerations, and elected
governments can claim legitimacy to pursue certain policy goals irrespective of
the evidence presented to them. The capacity of the political system to absorb
policy detail is an important factor in this context, and in the Irish case interviews
suggest that “… we are slowly moving away from just people’s opinions around
the table to actually discussing the numbers” (Interview A, 2019). With more
and more data being produced and becoming available to those involved in
public affairs, from lobby groups to politicians themselves, having robust and
independent sources of information becomes increasingly important.
National statistics offices have a vital role to play in this work. In the Irish case,
the CSO (founded in 1949) has long been the established source of partisan-free
data on Irish society and economy and its impartiality has never been called into
question, (see Chapter Five, this volume). Like IGEES, the CSO has developed
a network of statisticians across the civil service as part of the National Data
Infrastructure, and seeking to leverage administrative data held by government
departments for policy use across government. During 2017 and 2018, there
were highly charged political debates concerning housing and homelessness in
Ireland, which had at their heart disagreements over the number of new dwellings
being built across the state. The CSO was able to assist the government response
by developing a new series of housing output figures that conclusively provided
information on the subject.
From the perspective of one senior official, while IGEES has certainly helped
to improve the supply side and quality of decision making, there remains scope
for its work to be used more effectively:
‘… we still haven’t built enough of our critical mass to actually do

enough of the evidence building. It could be because there’s no data.
So there’s a … data infrastructure piece that needs to happen before you
can actually do any meaningful analysis. And it could also be because
[we’re] trying to change the culture and champion the concept of
58
evidence-based policy making which in some environments is maybe

not as advanced as it would be in others.’
‘… we’ve made big inroads [but] then there is the question of “Is
the system using that to actually make decisions or is this actually
becoming a part of the information set of the people while making
decisions?” And that then raises the question for us [of] “What is the
absorptive capacity?”’ (Interview A, 2019)
There is also evidence, however, that the demand side of policy analysis has
also expanded. It is not unusual for information published by a state agency to
make the headlines in national newspapers, or for journalists to use freedom of
information requests and open data to publicise shortcomings in public policy
that in turn dominate political debates. And politicians themselves are increasingly
adept at using such data. One interviewee noted how ministers were now more
inclined to get into policy specifics:
‘You [now] have a generation of politicians who are much more

comfortable in the detail of policy. So we would have ministers now
who would come and give PowerPoint presentations to their colleagues
at cabinet committees or government on roads, the broadband plan,
our climate change plan … and we’d get into policy, which … reflects
a different generation I think.’ (Interview B, 2019)
Conclusion
For much of the 20th century, a major task of the Irish civil service involved
recording large volumes of information about the ever-more diverse set of public
tasks performed by government, and distilling it down to provide coherent
information and advice to governments. The recent emergence of ‘digital-
era governance’ and more recently the production and use of big data within
government, involving machine learning, artificial intelligence and algorithms,
challenge the traditional model and the skill set of the civil service. Nowhere is
this more evident than in respect of the its policy analysis role, which remains
central to the functioning of government yet has never involved as much data
and data sources as it does today.
This chapter has demonstrated that although it retains the right to present
final policy options to government, as a result of criticisms made following the
2008 financial crisis, the Irish state’s administrative system is today formally more
open to external input in the policy-making process than at any other time in
its history. Ireland has also been a strong advocate of open data and increasing
amounts of information are now made available about the work of government
and its constituent organisations. Nonetheless, there remains scope for better and
more routine flows of information and collaboration between the civil service
and research institutes such as universities. Good models to follow include
59
longitudinal studies such as the government-funded Growing up in Ireland and

The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing series, which have yielded major insights
for Irish policy makers and which combine experiential and qualitative data with
the statistics produced by organisations such as the CSO.
Although many public service career patterns are still largely characterised
by movements between organisations and the development of skills ‘on the
job’, the requirement for ever-more sophisticated policy analysis, particularly
within the civil service, suggests that professional career streams will become
increasingly important. As it approaches its centenary year, the ability of the Irish
state administration to consistently perform policy analysis across an increasingly
diverse set of policy arenas remains a vital element of democratic government.
So too the study of policy analysis as a distinctive task of government is worthy
of greater attention than it has heretofore attracted.
Notes
1 The term civil servant was originally coined within the British system to distinguish between
those in service of the state but in a non-military – that is, civilian – capacity.
2 In this year, the functions were taken over by two state-owned companies, An Post and Telecom
Éireann respectively.
3 The Civil Service Code of Conduct states that: ‘The mission of the Civil Service is the
achievement of an excellent service for Government and the other institutions of State as well
as for the public as citizens and users of public services….’
4 This excludes those on civil service terms and conditions of employment working for state-
owned companies, but includes those classified as civil servants working in state agencies.
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62
FIVE
Introducing evidence into

policy making in Ireland
Frances Ruane
Introduction
In recent decades, Ireland has followed the trend (increasingly prevalent in the
United Kingdom [UK] and the European Union [EU] from the mid-1990s)
towards increased use of empirical evidence in policy making. The evidence-
informed (rather than evidence-based) approach favoured in Ireland recognises
that other less easily measurable factors also come into play in policy formulation.
The evidence sources and methods adopted are wide-ranging, reflecting the
increased access to anonymised micro-data from survey and administrative data,
the greater volume of research studies based on econometric, experimental and
quasi-experimental approaches, and on qualitative approaches used particularly
by sociologists and psychologists. This chapter focuses on the broad approach
being adopted in Ireland, with a specific emphasis on the major developments
in data quantity, quality and access to official statistics, under the auspices of the
Central Statistics Office (CSO), and on the Irish Government Economic and
Evaluation Service (IGEES), established to build the skills sets needed to analyse
data from these new sources. The chapter ends with a short discussion of the
new challenges and opportunities ahead.
The next section discusses the adoption of a more evidence-informed approach
in Ireland. This is followed by a detailed look at an important part of the
development of the evidence base for policy in Ireland, namely, the evolution
of the Irish Statistical System under the leadership of the CSO and the National
Statistics Board (NSB). The chapter continues by exploring how progress is
being made in equipping the system with the skills needed to analyse the newly
available data through the establishment of the IGEES. The final section looks
at some new challenges and opportunities ahead.
The adoption of an ‘evidence approach’ to public policy

While the concept of using evidence to inform public policy has been around
for several hundred years, the explicit issue of the evidence approach, and the
associated set of methodologies used for decision making in public policy,
have come strongly to the fore since the mid-1990s (Pawson, 2006; Lunn and
Ruane, 2013). At the centre of this focus is a more systematic approach to
63
the use of evidence, with the understanding that better policy decisions and
societal outcomes could be achieved by policy makers drawing on objective
and comprehensive evidence provided by researchers and analysts, and by policy
makers actively seeking and commissioning relevant objective evidence to inform
their decisions (see Nutley et al, 2010). There are many factors behind this focus
on evidence, and a reflection on these helps to set the context in which the
approach has developed in Ireland.
An important enabling factor is the digital revolution that has transformed
data systems and the methods that can be used to analyse data by large numbers
of people. Prior to the 1990s, the high cost of collecting and analysing data
meant that many issues were not systematically researched, and large datasets were
usually not shared, thereby limiting their use to inform policy. At the same time,
the digital revolution provided much easier access to data and information from
international sources, allowing existing approaches to be questioned and new
comparative analysis on a scale not previously possible. One negative side-effect
of the digital revolution is its fuelling a preoccupation (enhanced by media) with
immediacy and short-termism, with an overemphasis on the latest information
and less questioning about the quality of that information as a basis for policy
decisions and design. The short-termism also distracts attention from more in-
depth analysis.
A second factor is the growing requirement for governments to demonstrate
their contributions to action in the face of global and national events, to explain
these actions to the public at large, and to explain differences in the actions
they adopt in current versus previous contexts.1 The need for government
to explain its position is also a response to higher levels of education in the
population, which have led to calls for greater transparency and accountability
of public decision making. This call for greater accountability is also the product
of geopolitical changes, such as the weakening of the traditional left–right divide
in politics, and multilateral arrangements, such as the way in which the EU
develops its policies and engages in cross-country transfers.
A third factor is that people increasingly expect evidence to be used and policy
actions to be justified especially where tough decisions are required (for example,
the consolidation of cancer care in specialist centres in Ireland) in areas subject
to vigorous debate in the public media.2 In effect, governments are expected
to spell out the implications of major events or of new policies of considerable
complexity (for example, the impact of Brexit following the UK referendum in
2016). The quality and use of evidence in making public policy has had increased
attention since the 2008 global financial crisis.
In Ireland, the commitment to the greater use of evidence in public policy
decision making was also associated with EU structural funds, where evidence
was required to justify (and appraise) projects and programmes and then to
demonstrate the extent to which these projects/programmes achieved their
objectives. While the evaluation methods were not particularly sophisticated, they
subjected public expenditures to greater scrutiny, in terms of explaining the logic
64
Introducing evidence into policy making in Ireland
for the expenditure and the choice and efficiency of delivery mechanisms. The
EU’s more rigorous approach has become more embedded with the establishment
of the IGEES, as discussed later in the chapter (see also Chapters Four and Nine,
this volume).
A further influence on Ireland’s adoption of a more evidence-informed
approach in the 1990s came from the Irish civil service’s adoption of the rhetoric
used in the UK when the Labour Party came to power in late 1990s (Ruane,
2012). This was reinforced by new public management processes being adopted
under the Strategic Management Initiative (SMI) from the mid-1990s (Murray,
2001; Rhodes et al, 2012). This found its way into a wider public debate in the
policy and academic communities in Ireland under the auspices of the National
Economic and Social Forum (NESF, 2007), which also opened up the discussion
of how a wider range of evidence (for example, randomised control trials, natural
experiments and so on) might be used to inform policy.
The approach currently in place in Ireland continues to have two distinct
elements. The first is that policy should be ‘evidence-informed’ and not
‘evidence-based’, the latter being seen as suggesting that the evidence alone
could determine a policy decision. The evidence-informed approach takes care
of any concerns that politically elected leaders might not be (or be seen to be)
accountable for key decisions and that judgments might not have a major role
to play in decision making; this also ensures that significant powers are retained
for those making those judgments. The second element is the broadening and
deepening of the range of evidence that is routinely used to inform policy
compared with what had previously been used (Lunn and Ruane, 2013).
Emphasis on the evidence base

Central to the acceptance of an evidence-informed approach to policy in
Ireland is that the evidence will come from trusted, high-quality data that
are detailed enough to be informative in relation to decision making and that
allow comparisons with other relevant countries, such as those belonging to
the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). This
section concentrates on major developments in official statistics in Ireland in the
past two decades, clearing the way for the creation of a national data infrastructure
that supports evidence-informed policy making.
State of official statistics in the 1980s

These recent developments stand in stark contrast to the situation 30 years ago,
as set out in two major reports published in 1985, one by the Statistical Council
(Government of Ireland, 1985) and the second by the NESC (1985).3 John
Blackwell (1985), the main author of the NESC (1985) report, was highly critical
of the weak link between statistics, research and policy in Ireland, which he saw
as causing a dearth of evidence to inform policy decisions. Blackwell saw this as
65
reflected in major gaps in the statistical series available; little or no coordination,

quality control or integration in the production of statistics; the underutilisation
of administrative records as a basis for statistical evidence; and limited access to
data provided to researchers and analysts in Ireland.
Denis Conniffe (1985), the Chair of the Statistical Council, drew on its report
(Government of Ireland, 1985) to argue that greater flexibility and autonomy be
given to the CSO to increase its efficiency and effectiveness in producing statistics
and to allow it to coordinate the production and dissemination of statistics in
Ireland. This way, he suggested, the CSO could meet the needs of a wider range
of data users, as well as the requirements set by Eurostat. He also proposed that
the CSO widen its skill base, second staff across civil service departments, employ
new statistical methods, and increase computerisation.
While it took over a decade to begin to make serious progress in addressing
these criticisms, change in the subsequent two decades has been exceptional,
with a continuing momentum to improve system.4 In effect, all the criticisms
identified in 1985 have been fully addressed; see Ruane (2019).
It is instructive to consider how this seismic change in Irish statistics has come
about. It started with the decision of the Taoiseach (Prime Minister), Garret
FitzGerald, who had an exceptional interest in and knowledge of Irish official
statistics, to set up a Statistical Council. The momentum generated by its report
(Government of Ireland, 1985), which focused on producing more evidence, and
by the NESC (1985) report, which focused on using that evidence for policy,
led FitzGerald to establish the NSB, on an interim basis, in 1986. This action
ensured that the criticisms could no longer be ignored, even if there was a change
in government in 1987 (as there was) or a diminution in the support for such a
move within the civil service.
Rapid progress in the 1990s

The interim NSB worked with the CSO to develop the Statistics Act 1993,
which followed best international practice in terms of its comprehensive and
forward-looking vision for official statistics. The Act covered the establishment
of the CSO as an independent statutory body, the creation of a statutory NSB
(NSB, 2003), and the extended mandate for the CSO to collect data from key
sources (including access to administrative records).
Inter alia, the legislation made provision for the CSO to cooperate with other
bodies in the civil and public sectors to increase the range and quality of Irish
national statistics5 and to allow for increased user access to anonymised micro-
data under new confidentiality standards. The new NSB’s view was that official
statistics were a genuine public good, a position was in line with Sexton (1989)
and somewhat at variance with the then prevailing orthodoxy that endorsed a
‘user pays’ approach even in the case of official statistics.
With the 1993 Act came the adoption of a mission for Irish statistics that was
user-focussed, values-driven and transparent. This mission sat well in the overall
66
reform process in the Irish civil service, which was by then adopting a more data-
based approach, and this emphasis became yet stronger following the financial
crisis. The CSO’s approach of moving steadily forward, with the strong support of
the independent voice of the NSB, ensured that its independence, professionalism
and authority have faced no threat as it has implemented its extended mandate.
Consolidation of the new vision for the national statistical system in the 2000s
From the early 2000s, the NSB and the CSO used their new legal powers to
explore how accessing the data holdings of government departments and agencies
under the Act might enable greater use of administrative records for statistical
purposes, with a view to informing policy. This began with the establishment
of the Steering Group on Social and Equality Statistics (SGSES)6 (see Chapter
Fourteen, this volume) and continued with a group set up to focus on economic
and environmental statistics.
These groups led quickly to a set of projects on the statistical potential of
administrative records across all relevant government departments, and to plans
for each department to have its own data strategy; these projects facilitated the
harnessing of administrative data in the following decade, once unique identifiers
(individual, spatial and business) were in place to enable data linkage. The CSO’s
seconding of statisticians across departments increased awareness of the benefits
for departments of improving their data holdings to generate useful evidence to
inform policy.
As identified in 1985, a significant increase in resources for the CSO was
needed to develop official statistics. The major turn-around in the economy in
the mid-1990s helped to make this possible, allowing a doubling of the allocation
of funds to the CSO for pay and pensions in nominal terms between 1989 and
1999, with an almost further doubling between 1999 and 2004, and an increase
of over 40% between 2004 and 2019 (Ruane, 2019).
These additional resources facilitated the systematic incorporation of
administrative data into the production of official statistics, leading to major
new outputs and services, including new high-quality data series; improved
timeliness;7 special runs and anonymised research microdata files for key users;
and anonymised data for inclusion in the Irish Social Science Data Archive.
There was also increased general access to statistical outputs and data series on
the CSO website, which provided soft data so that users could undertake their
own analyses.
Despite access to micro-data being possible from the mid-1990s, user numbers
have only grown very recently, reflecting the larger community of analysts and
researchers in Ireland, the CSO’s investment in secure methods for accessing
research microdata files, and the establishment of the IGEES, which is discussed
in the next section (Ruane, 2019; see also Chapters Four and Eight, this volume).
While more remains to be done to create a comprehensive national statistical
system, there is now recognition of the need for, and benefits of, such progress, at
67
the highest levels in the civil service,8 reflecting the commitment to an evolving
vision of the role of evidence in better public policy making.9 Progress has been
slowest in creating unique identifiers for government administrative purposes,
particularly in relation to spatial identifiers; these are urgently needed to measure
the impact of policies and practices where situations vary by location, for example,
in relation to health services. There continue to be challenges associated with
the regional boundaries used by different public bodies; these will reduce when
an implementable system of geo-coding is in place.
On foot of the modernisation agenda, the CSO’s position is now closely aligned
with developments across the European Statistical System, where increasing
numbers of countries are now following Nordic models of making greater use
of administrative record data to build national data infrastructure, thereby freeing
up resources to undertake new activities.
This section has concentrated on developments in official statistics as these are
the largest single source of data that can underpin the evidence required to inform
policy. The following, final, section discusses the issue of future developments
and other sources of data to inform policy.
The contribution of analysts to providing evidence to inform

policy
As is clear from the previous section, high-quality data are essential to producing
evidence to inform policy. However, these data require the application of policy-
relevant analysis if they are to be of value to the policy-making process.
Paralleling improvements in the national data infrastructure, there has been
significant recent investment in analytical skills so that the benefits of such
investments in data infrastructure can be realised. However, starting in the late
1980s, the Irish civil service adopted a ‘generalist skills model’ and reduced
investment in its analytical capacity, despite the economy growing and becoming
more complex. This dearth of expertise meant that when policy ideas emerged
internationally, there was often no analysis available to show whether or not
specific policies would embed in Ireland (for cultural, economic or social
reasons), whether the relevant framework conditions were in place, or whether
it was possible or appropriate to evaluate their suitability.10
The consequences of the generalist model

The ‘generalist model’ effectively signalled that civil servants who wished to retain
and develop their specialist skill set would not be rewarded. Significant numbers
with these skills left the civil service to work in the private sector, or in public
sector organisations where they could increase and maintain their skill levels,
for example, the Central Bank of Ireland, the Economic and Social Research
Institute, Forfás (the industrial policy advisory board), the Competition Authority
and the regulatory offices (energy, telecoms, aviation and so on). These bodies
68
hired economists with master’s degrees and PhDs, with the specific remit of
providing technical analyses to inform decision making.
From the early 2000s, the supply of graduates with more technical master’s
degrees and PhDs in the social sciences in Ireland increased, in line with national
policy agreeing with the OECD’s emphasis on building advanced skills in science
and technology, and supported by EU funding. Many of these social science
graduates were employed in the public service but, for most of the first decade
of the new century, not in the civil service, which retained the generalist model.
Thus, despite adopting the language of an evidence-based approach, there was
little evidence of the civil service adopting such an approach internally. As the
economy began to grow more rapidly in the 1990s, government departments
increasingly hired economic consultants to meet their analytical and technical
needs.11 External calls for greater economic expertise within the civil service
were ignored, and even its capacity to set the terms of reference for consultancy
projects declined; by the late 1990s, evaluation was almost the only form of
technical economic analysis undertaken within the civil service (Ruane, 2012).
Change eventually came after the 2008 financial crisis (see Chapter Seven,
this volume). The new government in 2011 was pressurised to respond to the
growing calls for a government economic service, following continuing criticisms
in the media over the dearth of economic expertise within the civil service, and
the high costs of external economic consultants.
Reintroducing specialist skills

Residual resistance to abandoning the generalist model was evident in the title
of the new economic service explicitly referring to ‘evaluation’ and hence
becoming the Irish Government Economic and Evaluation Service. As some of
those engaged in evaluation were not necessarily economists, this boosted the
numbers in the IGEES and recognised that evaluation was the strongest part of
IGEES at the outset. The evaluation focus also reflected the importance attached
to value for money in the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, which
was responsible for establishing the IGEES.12
To gain acceptance within the civil service, the IGEES was established as an
integrated, cross-government service rather than a standalone central service
feeding out to departments. According to the Minister for Finance, Pascal
Donohoe, in response to a Dáil question, IGEES staff members are ‘an integral
part of each Department, adding their skill set to the varied expertise working
on policy analysis and formulation as directed by Departmental business plans’
(Donohoe, 2019).13 The same Dáil response also noted that the number of IGEES
staff increased from approximately 30 in 2012 to 160 in 2018. Approaching the
end of 2019, combined IGEES recruits and pre-existing departmental resources
amounted to over 200 analysts.
Since most of the earliest recruits were hired at Administrative Officer grade,
the dearth of economists at more senior levels delayed the development of the
69
service. The report of the IGEES Oversight Board, based on the first three years
of the service’s operation, provides a good picture of how challenging it was for
the IGEES to gain traction (IGEES, 2015), and paved the way for employment
at higher levels of entry (Assistant Principal and Principal Officer levels) into
IGEES in subsequent years.
In an approach similar to that adopted by the CSO, the original IGEES
Management Board worked by persuasion to engage with each government
department in building up its IGEES staff. By 2019, the governance had
developed further under the guidance of Internal and External Advisory
Groups that supported closer interactions with analysts outside the civil service,
shaping how internal and external expertise would be used in research to inform
policy in the decade ahead (Best and Holmes, 2010; Lunn and Ruane, 2013).
In addition, a Learning and Development Framework now delivers a wide
range of training courses that help to balance the work of the IGEES across
different domains. These domains include analysis to identify policy challenges
and inform policy design and formation (working closely with those engaged
in policy delivery); robust economic evaluation of interventions to identify
results for future learning; and expenditure reviews, which assist the process
of accountability. IGEES economists are now undertaking specific research
projects that will help ensure that the work of analysts will deal with social
as well as economic policy issues, and link more externally to the wider
research community.
This latter development raises the issue of how and where research and analysis
will take place in the future, and how the IGEES will identify appropriate peer
reviews for its work. By the end of 2018, IGEES analysts had produced and
published over 200 policy analysis papers across broad policy areas, all seen
as contributing to strengthening the evidence base for policy formulation in
Ireland. In some instances, these analyses are directly replacing what would
previously have been commissioned from consultants. In other cases, they
represent the development of a more systematic approach to building an
integrated evidence base for policy, often drawing on confidential CSO or
departmental datasets.
IGEES now covers all government departments but has not yet extended to
the wider public sector.14 Its new strategic direction, informed by an extensive
internal and external consultation processes (including an OECD review
published in late 2019), will be outlined in its next medium-term strategy
document for 2020–23.15 This strategy will focus on further strengthening the
analytical capacity of the civil service (through recruitment and learning and
development programmes), deeper collaboration with CSO statisticians, to
unlock the potential of smart administrative data, stronger engagement with the
policy-making structures to increase the impact of evidence on policy making,
and greater engagement with the national and international policy analysis
community. Crucial to success will be that the best data and the widest possible
range of methods are applied.
70
The future: data gaps, data protection, trust in data, statistical

governance
As mentioned earlier, the volume of data available from official statistics for
research to inform policy has increased very significantly. However, significant
gaps remain, such as those identified by a survey of users and reported in the
NSB’s strategic priorities report (2015, p 33): ‘… more coherent health sector
data, more information about energy and environment issues, better services
data and the need for more detail in regional statistics … a growing demand for
new social indicators in the context of the increasing priority being given to
well-being and social progress’.
This list does not refer to data required to address the challenges of globalisation
or Brexit. Research on globalisation requires a multi-country approach, with
Ireland linked into new macroeconomic frameworks and new data-collection and
data-sharing methods, being led by the OECD, Eurostat and the United Nations.
This approach will allow international comparisons relevant to policy issues, both
macro and micro, with increased sharing of methodologies and potential sources
among EU countries.
Increasing numbers of international macro-type indicators will help identify
where attention should be directed or assumptions should be challenged, and
policy interventions will require national data that capture the heterogeneity
of the population within countries. Here CSO research relating to microdata
files and administrative data (especially that which can be used for longitudinal
analyses) will be vital, with data based on unique identifiers to ensure that
characteristics and impacts are properly measured sub-nationally. Such analyses
allow for informative types of disaggregation, such as by gender, age, education
levels, location and so on.
The issue of how General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will affect the
use of survey and administrative micro-datasets as a basis for research and analysis
to inform policy is not clear. Meeting GDPR requirements certainly increases
the burden of using micro-data and may limit the extent to which datasets can
be combined, both within and across countries. GDPR will also come into
play when looking at the potential for collecting data from private sources, such
as electronic data on tourism or retail sales (which are derived as a by-product
of mobile phone use). While the potential of new ‘Big Data’ sources seems
considerable, it raises new ethical and data-continuity issues for researchers, and
their use may be limited by the skill sets of those producing evidence to inform
policy. The growing demand for data-analytic and modelling skills suggests a
skill shortage may emerge if supply does not increase and public sector pay rates
do not allow skill retention, thereby delaying the speed of realising the potential
benefits from these data sources.
The multiple data sources within the CSO place it potentially in a unique
situation to undertake policy-related research, making it timely to have an open
discussion of the different roles individuals and institutions might play in producing
71
evidence to inform policy, and of providing greater transparency in relation to how

data can be combined. Transparency in the analysis undertaken and independence
in the collection of data are crucial if an evidence-informed approach is to be
robust. External analysts have a key role to play in monitoring progress, or regress,
and disseminating this work in academic, policy and media forums.
The CSO, like all national statistical offices, faces challenges of relevance, cost
and timeliness from the owners of new private sector data sources, whose quality
standards are currently not subject to any regulatory standards. While there have
been occasions when some have questioned the reliability and value of some CSO
data over the years, Irish official statistics remain highly trusted and regarded.16
However, trust must not be presumed and, for example, the negative media
coverage associated with the upward revision of the GDP growth rate to 26%
in 2015 has the potential to create trust issues unless the CSO provides details
and explanations that can be widely understood.17 The acceptance of evidence
based on official statistics to inform policy depends critically on the trust in those
statistics, and all statistical offices internationally face an urgent imperative to deal
with any possible distrust or with public misuse of those statistics.
In Ireland, there has been no charge of any political influence on the statistics
process, for example, in terms of the timing of releases, the spinning of data or
the independent leadership of the CSO. In this regard, Ireland stands in contrast
to several EU countries where the appointment to the head of the statistical office
appears to be subject to political influence, as can the timing of data releases. In
other non-EU countries, most notably the United States, aspersions have been
cast on official statistics as being the best sets of measures. This points to the risk
of allowing any decline in high governance standards in the statistical system and
any reduction in the professional standing or skills of official statisticians. There is
also the issue of the misuse of official statistics in some countries (for example, in
the UK ahead of the Brexit referendum) and consideration should be given as to
how any such development would be handled by the CSO.18 This issue is also of
EU-wide concern, especially with the growth of extremist groups that criticise
any statistics, including official statistics, that do not align with their views.
Ireland must ensure that current high governance standards are maintained
and must deal effectively with any potential misuse of official statistics should
it arise. In support of good governance, the CSO should continue to improve
its engagement with civil society and to build statistical literacy in Ireland.
Ultimately, such literacy, supported by accessible infographics, will reduce the
risk of individuals being misled by the misuse of official statistics, or become
increasingly disconnected from the official measures of economic, social and
environmental change.
Concluding comments
This chapter has concentrated particularly on the role of official data in providing
the material for researchers and analysts to produce evidence to inform policy.
72
This should not lead to the conclusion that these are the only data available but
rather to an acknowledgement that these are the largest source of continuous
statistical data for the country across a multitude of domains. Increasingly, analysis
and research for policy design require a combination of methods that use both
quantitative and qualitative data. For example, the strength of Ireland’s two
national longitudinal studies, Growing Up in Ireland and The Irish Longitudinal
Study on Ageing, reflect the combined strength of high-quality data that are
both quantitative and qualitative, and draw on a wide range of disciplines in
their design.
Notes
1 For example, the reference to evidence for policy based on ‘what worked’ was used by the
British Labour Party in the 1990s to reposition its stance on many policy positions that it had
held for decades.
2 Media, both traditional and social, also contribute to the dissemination of ‘fake facts’ that are
taken up in policy discussions.
3 These reports were discussed at a public meeting of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of
Ireland in 1985, together with the response by the Director of the CSO (Linehan, 1985). The
discussion indicated a high level of tension in relation to the paucity of data available to inform
policy, which the CSO response attributed entirely to the availability of resources.
4 The delay in implementation was primarily due to resource and organisational demands associated
with the relocation of activities to Cork, which affected information technology developments.
5 This range contrasts with what would have been in place prior to 1993, when the CSO mandate
related to CSO data only, with no reference to administrative data.
6 The focus on social statistics was significant as they had been the Cinderella of the Irish statistical
system up to the 1990s. The SGSES report, Developing Irish Social and Equality Statistics to meet
Policy Needs, was published in 2003.
7 Whereas it took typically five years or more to process the full range of census data up to the
end of the 1980s, the full range of census volumes are now released in the year after the Census
is held.
8 For example, the website of the Department of An Taoiseach in 2019 describes its role as: ‘To
offer objective and evidence-informed advice to Government, respond to developments, and
deliver Government objectives while striving to achieve optimal outcomes in the long-term
national interest. To serve citizens and stakeholders efficiently, equally and with respect, in a
system that is open, transparent and accountable.’ See www.gov.ie/en/organisation/department-
of-the-taoiseach/?referrer=/consult_english1.doc
9 An address by Robert Watt, Secretary-General at the Department of Public Expenditure and
Reform at the Whitaker Institute in the National University of Ireland Galway (NUIG) in
September 2018 provides a current picture of how the overall system is developing. See: https://
www.gov.ie/ga/oraid/0da908-keynote-speech-of-secretary-general-watt-on-making-better-
public-pol/
10 The 2011/12 proposal that Ireland should follow the Dutch method of private health insurance
was one such example.
11 Consultants served to provide significant protection to civil servants by creating a convenient
distance between decision makers and the source of suggested actions when policies were
unsuccessful or when proposals were politically unpalatable.
12 The explicit goals set for the IGEES have evolved slightly and are currently to develop a
professional economic and evaluation service that will provide high standards of economic
and policy analysis to assist the government decision-making process; to ensure application
of established best practices in policy evaluation in support of better value for money and
73
more effective policy and programme interventions by state authorities; and to facilitate more
open policy dialogue with academia, external specialists and stakeholders across the broad
socioeconomic spectrum (IGEES, 2019).
13 Some of those working outside the IGEES have advanced skills that combine well with those
members in the IGEES, such a PhDs in sociology, psychology, law and so on, enhancing the
richness of approaches that can be used to generate good policy analysis.
14 Such an extension would widen the sphere of influence of analysts and would widen the
perceived benefits of a career in the Irish public sector.
15 See IGEES (2016) for its 2016–19 medium-term strategy.
16 For a much fuller discussion of the issues related to trust in statistics in Ireland, see the papers
by Pádraig Dalton and Patricia O’Hara at the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society’s Symposium
on Safeguarding Trust in Official Statistics (Dalton, 2014; O’Hara, 2014).
17 To get a picture of the complexity of the issues involved, see, for example, the report of the
Economic Statistics Review Group (CSO, 2016) and the response to its main recommendations
(CSO, 2017).
18 It is important that Ireland does not fall behind in dealing with the misuse of official statistics,
recalling the statement in Blackwell (1985, p 1) to the effect that data constitute ‘the currency
of democracy’.
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Part Two
Policy analysis at various
levels of government:
from local to the EU
77
SIX
Ireland’s ‘unique blend’: local

government and policy analysis
Aodh Quinlivan
There should be room in a democratic country for two levels of

government, each with its area of political responsibility. The local
level should not have to be compelled to live in perpetual fear of a
centralising vortex. (Marshall, 1967)
Introduction
A fundamental argument in favour of local government is the building and
expression of community identity. Wilson and Game (2002, p 38) argue that local
authorities are the governments of particular communities and the institutions
of local government ought to reflect and reinforce people’s sense of place and
community. Callanan (2018, p 1) observes that in Ireland the sense of distinctive
local identity is strong: ‘Even in a globalised society, it seems as though people
continue to attach a higher value to their locality and to localness.’ In its purest
form, we are talking about a system whereby councils of elected politicians
make policy decisions on behalf of their local communities. Powers are not
retained at central level by national government but are held and maintained
by citizens of each community (Weeks and Quinlivan, 2009, p 2). Critical
to this understanding of local government is the notion of councils having
substantial control of local affairs. As will be seen in the following sections, local
government in Ireland is characterised by functional and financial centralisation,
increasing managerialism and the rationalisation of councils through abolitions
and forced mergers. Yet, it continues to provide services that are essential to the
everyday lives of citizens. Policy analysis is complex in this environment but it
has a crucial role to play if we are to foster a debate to improve local government
and local democracy.
This chapter is divided into four main parts. After justifying the existence of
local government, the first section reviews historical policy analysis functions and
capacity in the Irish system. The chapter then outlines the current framework of
local government in Ireland. The following section assesses the system’s policy
analysis, process, function and capacities. A final section examines recent reforms
to build democratic participation into policy analysis processes.
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Justification for the existence of local government

Spreading of power is a rudimentary justification for local government, the
argument being that it is hazardous to concentrate too much power in one
organ of the state. This is connected to the belief that the primary benefit of
local government is that it is local and requires a local analytical frame for policy
making. Local government is accessible to the general public in a way that
national government can never be. Sharpe (1970, p 160) refers to this as the
‘democratic primacy’ that local government holds over central government. This
promotes citizenship and encourages people to take an interest in local policy
choices. For example, local forms of policy analysis may include opportunities
for people to participate at open public meetings, at citizens’ panels, or through a
local development plan process (Weeks and Quinlivan, 2009, p 3). Collins (1954)
emphasises the possibility of local government being a ‘school of citizenship’.
Setting aside democratic reasons, the need for local government is warranted on
the basis of providing local public services. It can be asserted that service provision
could come through a system of local administration or functional decentralisation,
as opposed to local government but, as noted by Weeks and Quinlivan (2009, p 4),
‘this view misses the point that locally elected representatives, with community
knowledge and an understanding of the characteristics of the area, are best placed
to develop strategies and provide public services’.
Local government can also have a key role to play as an agent of central
government and as a local regulator. It is not unusual for central government to
make use of its network of local authorities as agents. For example, Irish local
authorities act as an agent of central government in collecting motor tax on
behalf of the state. In areas such as planning and environmental protection, it is
appropriate that local councils play a role in ensuring that national standards are
observed (Weeks and Quinlivan, 2009, p 5). Summarising all of the previously
mentioned points, Callanan (2018) has produced a useful framework of justifying
local government and its diverse and interrelated roles (see Table 6.1). Each of
these justifications can be assessed in the context of governance capacity and
policy analysis, for example, analysis of policy determination, policy content
and policy outcomes.
Table 6.1: Callanan ‘justification of local government’ framework, 2018

Justification 1 Instrument of local democracy
Justification 2 Provider of services
Justification 3 Agent of central government
Justification 4 Local regulator
Justification 5 Local leader and coordinator within local governance
Source: Callanan (2018)
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Ireland’s ‘unique blend’: local government and policy analysis
The fifth justification has grown in prominence in recent years, with the trend
towards local governance, whereby local authorities are working with networks
of local actors, itself a new approach to policy analysis. This will be discussed later
in the chapter in the context of Local Community Development Committees
(LCDCs) and Public Participation Networks (PPNs). Callanan (2018, p 11)
argues that local government in Ireland is learning how to develop its roles
‘as a convenor, facilitator, influencer, and persuader, relying on skills such as
networking, influencing, negotiating, bargaining, cajoling, joint problem-solving,
and the ability to cope with limited control and a degree of uncertainty and risk.’
Local government in Ireland: historical development

The Local Government (Ireland) Act 1898 introduced modern and representative
local government to Ireland. County councils, urban district councils, and rural
district councils were now to be elected on a wide franchise that included
women. At the turn of the 19th century, Ireland’s local government system
closely resembled its counterparts in England and Wales with close to 600 local
authorities of all kinds, including county councils and rural district councils.
After independence, the local government system went through a period of
retrenchment. The new Free State government wanted to assert its authority and
control and the message was clear – ‘sovereignty and self-government was to be
vested in central government accountable to an Irish parliament in Dublin, not
dispersed or extended to local areas’ (Callanan, 2018, p 19). An early legislative
measure of the new Irish parliament was the Local Government (Temporary
Provisions) Act 1923, which provided for the dissolution of local authorities that
were not performing effectively and their replacement by government-appointed
Commissioners. For example, both Dublin Corporation and Cork Corporation
were dissolved in 1924; 23 local authorities were dissolved because of political
dissent or financial problems and replaced by Commissioners within the first three
years of the legislation (see Quinlivan, 2017). Through the 1930s, 1940s and
1950s, ‘intense centralisation and general subordination to central government’
(Barrington, 1991, p 157) were the dominant themes in local government, with
consequences for policy analysis.
The 1960s brought prosperity and optimism on the back of the 1958
Programme for Economic Expansion. The positive mood was reflected by the
Local Government (Planning and Development) Act 1963, which envisaged local
authorities expanding their roles into ‘development corporations’. The optimism
soon dissipated and the potential of local government at this time was never
realised, partly because ‘arteries had grown too hard and bureaucratic sclerosis
had become too far advanced’ (Barrington, 1991, p 158). The following decade
saw local authorities relieved of their health functions (with the establishment of
regional health boards) and also relieved of financial independence. An auction
between the main political parties before the 1977 general election resulted in the
abolition of rates on domestic dwellings (the primary source of local authority
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funding) on the basis that the exchequer would meet the costs, a promise that
was never fulfilled.
The 1985 policy document, The Reform of Local Government (Government
of Ireland), proposed a major devolution of functions to local authorities, a
relaxation of ultra vires1 and the creation of new town councils for every town
with a population of over 2,000. Barrington (1991, p 161) recalls: ‘In 1985 it
looked as if a new dawn might be breaking, that the tide of centripetalism might
be turned back.’ Alas, Barrington’s optimism was misplaced and he subsequently
noted: ‘This programme manifestly evoked no enthusiasm in the central bodies
and, when the government went out of office in early 1987, just one function
had been transferred – the licensing of dogs! Even central government was not
now strong enough to cope with the entrenched centralisers of the central
bureaucracy’ (Barrington, 1991, p 161). The Advisory Expert Committee on
Local Government Reorganisation and Reform was appointed in 1990, under
the chairmanship of the previously cited Tom Barrington. The Barrington report
was officially published in March 1991 (Advisory Expert Committee on Local
Government Reorganisation and Reform, 1991).
The government’s response can be judged by the Local Government Act 1991,
which soon followed. The legislation received a lot of criticism for its half-
hearted acceptance of the Barrington proposals. Writing in the Irish Independent
on 13 May 1991, James Downey described the bill as a ‘legislative monstrosity’
that sent a clear message that the government had no intention of setting up a
system of meaningful, powerful local councils. While Downey’s criticism has
validity, the Local Government Act 1991 introduced some positive changes in
the Irish local government system and the work was continued with legislation in
1993 and 1994. For example, the principle of general competence was extended
to local authorities to act in the interest of their areas. Three county councils were
created in Dublin, further restrictions to the dual mandate were introduced, in
some areas of local government law there was modernisation, and city and county
managers were appointed on a fixed-term contract of seven years. Ultimately,
however, the results were piecemeal and did not represent a radical overhaul of
local government.
The year 1996 can be regarded as a watershed in the reform trajectory because
a number of key documents were published that year. The most influential
document was Better Local Government (Government of Ireland, 1996), which
set out a programme that was the basis for significant processual and structural
changes. It proposed changes based on four pillars, namely: enhancing local
democracy; serving the customer better; developing efficiency; and providing
proper resources for local authorities. Its impact was far-reaching and the changes
it instigated continue to be influential, particularly those facilitating strategic
planning and improving customer service. Constitutional recognition was
bestowed on local government following a referendum in 1999, finally enshrining
local government’s role in defining local priorities, promoting the interests of
community, providing statutory services and making clear provision for local
82
elections every five years. The new millennium continued the impetus for local
government reform. Modernising Government – The Challenge for Local Government
(Government of Ireland, 2000), published in 2000, outlined how elements of the
national Strategic Management Initiative were to be applied at local authority
level. The Report of the Task Force on the Integration of Local Government and Local
Development Systems (Government of Ireland, 1998) served as a blueprint for a
structural reform that resulted in creation of county/city development boards. The
plethora of disparate laws relating to local government was consolidated in the
Local Government Act 2001, which also served to modernise some of the archaic
provisions that were still in force. The unprecedented recession that affected
Ireland after the 2008 global financial crisis caused a shrinking of the services
and staffing of local authorities (see Chapter Four, this volume). A Report of the
Special Group on Public Service Numbers and Expenditure Programmes (Department
of Finance, 2009) led to the Report of the Local Government Efficiency Review Group
(Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, 2010) and
to reports by the Local Government Efficiency Review Implementation Group
(2012 and 2013). All advocated a reduction in local government staffing and
reform of administration and financing. The local government sector surpassed
the recommendations proposed in the 2010 Report of the Local Government
Efficiency Review Group (Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local
Government) – local authority staffing decreased by 24.2% nationally in the five
years to 2013 while gross savings of €839m were achieved in the period 2008–12
(CCMA, 2013). Achieving these savings and efficiencies involved modifying
practices, attitudes and resource usage, reforms that have had lasting impact, both
positive and negative, including on policy making and policy analysis.
The current nature of local government in Ireland

The landmark Local Government Reform Act 2014 provides the context for
our understanding of Irish local government today. The legislation was described
by the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government, Phil
Hogan TD, as the most far-reaching change in structures, functions, operational
arrangements and governance in the Irish local government since 1899. The most
visible facet of Minister Hogan’s reform package was structural, with a reduction
in the number of local authorities from 114 to 31. This was achieved through the
complete abolition of the secondary tier of Irish local government comprising
80 town authorities (75 town councils and five borough councils). In addition,
there were mergers involving Limerick City and County Councils, Waterford
City and County Councils, and North and South Tipperary County Councils.
The 2014 reforms also saw a reduction in the number of councillors from 1,627
to 949. Minister Hogan justified his decision to abolish all 80 town authorities
on the basis that these councils had 46% of all councillors in the country, while
only representing 14% of the population and dealing with a mere 7% of all
local government activity. Interestingly, due to the absence of constitutional
83
protection for subnational government in Bunreacht na hÉireann, a whole

tier of local government was removed through legislation without reference
to the people by way of referendum. Rationalisation of local authorities is not
unique to Ireland and there is an ongoing debate about the optimal size of local
government and associated issues such as amalgamations, costs and economies
of scale. The international research suggests that there is a weak link between
size and costs, and that local authority mergers have limited intrinsic efficiency
and can involve significant transactional costs and, sometimes, dis-economies of
scale (see Byrnes and Dollery, 2002; Elcock et al, 2010; Martin and Schiff, 2011;
Callanan et al, 2014).
An economic crisis accompanied by fiscal restraints and dramatic reductions
in local government budgets invariably leads to a concentration on territorial
and functional reforms (for example, boundary changes and amalgamations)
and a neglect of democratic dimensions of reform. This was definitely the
case in Ireland post-2008. By any standards, a 73% reduction in the number
of local authorities was a drastic measure. With 114 local authorities, Ireland
already possessed, from a comparative perspective, fewer local authorities than
most countries in Europe and had very high citizen-to-council and citizen-to-
councillor ratios. With just 31 councils, an even greater distance has been created
between the citizen and the local council. This distance has constrained the scope
for local government policy making in conjunction with citizens. The predictable
rationale for the structural changes involved economies of scale and cost savings
but the international research evidence suggests that large-scale authorities do not
necessarily produce efficiencies and savings (Byrnes and Dollery, 2002; Callanan
et al, 2014). Once local government stops being local, a democratic deficit is
established and the evidence shows that citizen satisfaction with local services
tends to be higher in smaller local authorities (see Quinlivan, 2017).
Callanan (2018, p 317) identifies four broad categories of territorial structures
in international local government:
• small local authorities with fewer than 10,000 inhabitants on average;

• medium-sized local authorities with between 10,000 and 40,000 inhabitants
on average;
• large local authorities with between 40,000 and 100,000 inhabitants on
average;
• very large local authorities with an average of over 100,000 inhabitants.
With Ireland having a population of just under five million (4,921,500) and 31 local
authorities, the average population per council is 158,758. This places Ireland in the
‘very large’ category alongside the United Kingdom (166,000), Northern Ireland
(164,500) and Korea (224,500). This contrasts starkly with the Czech Republic
(1,500), France (2,000), Hungary (3,000) and Switzerland (3,500).
Historically, local authorities in Ireland are responsible for a narrow range of
functions (see Callanan and MacCarthaigh, 2008; Collins and Quinlivan, 2010;
84
Loughlin, 2011). As Callanan (2018, p 326) points out, Irish local authorities
have only minor responsibilities in education, primary healthcare, transport and
policing. While the Local Government Reform Act 2014, did not generally
devolve powers from central to local government, it did give local authorities a
more overt role in economic development, based on the unique characteristics
and strategic position of councils. Following the provisions of the 2014 legislation,
each local authority established an LCDC. In addition, each local authority was
given the responsibility to prepare a six-year local economic and community
plan, to promote development in its functional area. Local enterprise offices
would also be created to provide advice, information and support to people in
starting or growing their own businesses. In an effort to align local government
and local development activity, it was furthermore decided that responsibility for
the management of partnership programmes, such as LEADER,2 an EU-funded
rural development programme, would transfer to local councils and the LCDCs.
This move generated some controversy and it is not yet clear how the alignment
of development activity at local level will be supported by a national framework.
Quinn (2015, p 17) comments: ‘The local-level reforms will only succeed if
there is a whole-of-government approach at national level to programme design,
delivery and evaluation.’ If this occurs, there could be positive consequences for
policy analysis and capacity at local level.
Finance is a major restraint on the development of local government in Ireland.
Local government spending as a percentage of general government spending
in Ireland is a mere 8.4% (Fórsa, 2019, p 13). The average across the European
Union is 23.1%, and in Denmark it is 65.9%. This reinforces the research of
Considine and Reidy (2015, p 121) that ‘very few countries spend less on local
government than we do’.
The majority of money spent by local authorities derives from local revenue
sources. This is positive, but the rate for some service charges is set nationally, as
is the range for increases or decreases in the local property tax. The proportion
of local government income from local taxes is low by international comparative
standards and it is hard to disagree with the conclusion by Lee (1989, p 562): ‘The
thrust of central government since independence has been to restrict the scope
of local authorities and to centralise control over financial resources.’
Given the centralised nature of local government in Ireland, with a narrow
range of functions and a low level of local public expenditure, it is hardly a
surprise that Ireland fares badly on the International Local Autonomy Index,
produced by Ladner and colleagues (2016). Ireland is in the last of five categories
based on the degree of autonomy of local government:
• Category 1: High local government autonomy

• Category 2: Medium-high local government autonomy
• Category 3: Medium local government autonomy
• Category 4: Medium-low local government autonomy
• Category 5: Low local government autonomy
85
Ireland ranks in 38th position out of 39 in the league table, with only Moldova
being more centralised.
Perhaps all of the aforementioned issues help to explain the declining turnout
of citizens at local government elections. The most recent election, which took
place on 24 May 2019, did not generate much enthusiasm among the public
at large. From a total electorate of 3,527,800, only one in two people chose to
exercise their democratic mandate. The turnout was 1,772,025, representing
50%, the joint lowest in the history of the state with the centenary elections
of 1999. Spoiled votes amounted to 34,610, meaning the total valid poll
was 1,737,415.
Policy making and policy capacity in Irish local government

Local authorities in Ireland operate under the classical politics–administration
dichotomy. Councillors, as the democratically elected members of the local
authority, are responsible for the policy framework and priorities of the
council. Under local government legislation, the functions and powers of
local authorities are divided into two classes: reserved functions, performable
directly by the elected members, and executive functions, performed by the
chief executive (formerly called city or county manager) by order. While the
law provides a clear division of functions, it was never the intention that the
elected members and the chief executive should operate independently of each
other. The fact that the executive functions are assigned to the chief executive
is simply intended to provide the elected council with an experienced, whole-
time administrator for the prompt and efficient discharge of day-to-day business
without making an undue demand on the time of the elected members, who
are invariably part-timers. The chief executive is an officer of the city or county
council, appointed by the elected members on the recommendation of the
Public Appointments Service; the members, with the consent of the minister,
may suspend or remove the chief executive from office. The elected council is
responsible for all policy decisions – including financial policy – and the chief
executive must act in conformity with the general policy laid down by them.
In carrying out her/his duties, the chief executive operates under the general
supervision of the council.
One interesting issue is whether councillors effectively use the powers they
possess. The perception among many elected members is that the balance
of power in the local government system is skewed in favour of the chief
executive. The Fórsa trade union’s More Power To You document (2019, p 7)
argues that local government is impeded by ‘executive direction’ with a loss of
democratic power due to increased managerialism and new public management
(NPM) philosophies. However, as alluded to in the 2008 Green Paper on local
government reform (Government of Ireland, 2008, p 103), it can also be argued
that councillors over the years have shirked their responsibilities. Callanan (2018,
p 59) states: ‘While much rhetoric has been expended on the need to give
86
greater responsibilities to the elected council, more incrementally a series of

decisions has resulted in changes in the other direction, effectively transferring
responsibility for decision-making in some areas from the elected council to the
chief executive.’ He cites powers in relation to Traveller accommodation and
waste management. This perspective is supported by former councillor, Brian
Bermingham: “We’ve passed the estimates to the city manager. We’ve passed away
the issue of Traveller accommodation to the manager. We’ve passed away the issue
of waste management to the manager. We’ve done it to ourselves. Councillors
give away powers” (cited in Quinlivan, 2011, p 3).
Of course, the elephant in the room – in terms of the restricted nature of policy
making in local government – continues to be centralisation and the parental
approach of central government through the Department of Housing, Planning
and Local Government, which is responsible for putting forward most of the
legislative agenda for local authorities. As Callanan (2018, p 370) concludes:
‘There is not much point taking part in local decision-making if local government
operates in a straitjacket and all the key decisions have already been taken at the
national level.’ It also has to be recognised that local authorities have relationships
with myriad public agencies, government departments, community groups
and representative associations, and not just with the Department of Housing,
Planning and Local Government. Policy emerges through a complex multilevel
governance network, comprising many actors.
One reform in this regard took place in 1998/99 when Strategic Policy
Committees (SPCs) were introduced to assist councils in policy formulation,
development and review. The aim of the initiative was to segregate out high-
level issues centred on policy and strategy and to have them dealt with in a
forum removed from ‘parish pump’ business. Each SPC should have at least one
third of its members drawn from ‘sectoral interests’, that is, representatives from
community and voluntary organisations, environmental groups, trade unions and
local business associations. SPCs allow for the discussion of new policies between
public representatives and involved interests and they reflect a localised version
of national social partnership. While the effectiveness of SPCs varies across local
councils, a review of the structure in 2004 highlighted the enhanced potential
for policy analysis and noted that ‘an important by-product of the SPC process
has been a better relationship between elected members and groups representing
different interests within the local area’ (IPA, 2004, p 42).
Other structures have been introduced in recent years to enhance local
democracy and participation in policy making (see also Chapter Fifteen, this
volume, for a broader discussion on widening and deepening democracy). These
include PPNs, LCDCs, forums for young and elderly people, and Joint Policing
Committees. PPNs, in particular, have emerged as an important new local
government structure to allow local groups and organisations to contribute to
decision making on local government policies. They also serve as a mechanism
through which representatives are elected on other local government structures,
such as LCDCs and SPCs.
87
Example: Cork City Council (CCC)

CCC provides an illustrative example of how a PPN can be used effectively. Cork
City PPN comprises community, voluntary, social inclusion and environmental
groups in Cork city. It was founded in 2015 as a publicly funded independent
body led by the decisions of its members, run by a secretariat (steering
committee), and supported by two full-time staff. The PPN comprises over
130 groups and has been growing steadily since 2015. Seeing the potential of
the PPN, CCC worked towards becoming a supportive and effective stakeholder
in the PPN process. In 2017, the council and the PPN began collaborating to
design a consultation model. The purpose of the model was to embed the role
of the PPN in the operation of the council, so as to add value to the work of the
council. The council engaged to academic help from University College Cork
(UCC) to provide a training and capacity enhancement programme for PPN
members, councillors and staff of the local authority. There was a desire to move
away from co-opted consultation – whereby participation tends to be tokenistic
and representatives have no real power or input – to genuine collaboration, co-
learning, collective action and an alternative approach to policy analysis. Central
to this was the nomination of a senior executive assistant within each area of the
council to become a ‘PPN champion’. This is a fixed role and each department
ensures continuity and succession to secure the relationship with the PPN. The
‘PPN champion’ takes responsibility for ensuring that consideration of the PPN
is embedded into the policy processes and procedures within that department.
Engaging the community in the work of CCC is now predicated on a consistent
flow of information in both directions. This extends from the initial stages, where
the PPN is notified of an upcoming consultation opportunity, to the conclusion
of that process and the implementation of a decision. The key principles inherent
in this dialogue, as agreed by CCC and the PPN, are as follows:
• Timely resolution of consultation should not be compromised beyond what

is reasonable to ensure clarity. Meaningful consultation should not frustrate
achievement of outcomes.
• Consultation with the PPN as representatives of the broader community
should be carried out in parallel with – rather than sequentially from – internal
consultation procedures.
• The council should commit to incorporating community consultation into
the earliest possible stage of policy and decision making, to secure meaningful
input from the community.
• The council should recognise the importance of feedback to the PPN on
outcomes of the consultation process. This may involve a verbal or written
report back to the PPN coordinator on which views and ideas are to be
incorporated, wholly or partly into the work, and, where a viewpoint that
was strongly held by the PPN has not been taken into account in a policy, an
account of why that is the case.
88
• PPN and the city council agree that successful consultation is not synonymous
with all views and ideas being incorporated, but rather with a transparent
interaction where the community is listened to and consultation contributions
are assessed fairly and on merit.
CCC has now become a leader in the effective use of its PPN network to enhance
the local policy process and policy analysis occurs between the council and the
PPN. Senior managers and directors of service of the council now contribute
to six-monthly planning meetings with the PPN secretariat to forecast policy
priorities in various SPCs and the LCDC in the months ahead. ‘PPN update’ is
a standing item on meeting agendas and there is a commitment to the ongoing
upskilling of new PPN members through training, mentoring and preparatory
introductions. During 2018 and 2019, the PPN in Cork has been centrally
involved in many of the council’s policy processes, including in the following areas:
• local area plans, conservation areas and flood management;

• transport and movement strategies, and traffic and road measures;
• housing and Traveller accommodation;
• rates;
• arts, culture and creativity policies;
• recreation in particular parks, events and public green space;
• LGBTI issues and other aspects of diversity and social inclusion;
• funding streams and implementing bodies;
• Smart Cities and digital initiatives.
Across the local government system, an enormous amount of activity is

taking place and collaborations between local councils, third-level educational
institutions and the private sector are especially strong. Box 6.1 sets out some
examples of policy innovation.
Box 6.1: Examples of policy innovation
Dublin City Council has been at the forefront with its Rediscover Furniture and Paint
Recycling project.The council set up this project as a community employment initiative.
Donations of furniture and paint are accepted that might previously have been destined
for landfill.The furniture is restored and the paint repotted with the products then being
sold at the Ballymun farmers’ market, at environmental events and through Rediscovery
Centre. The project has been highly successful in providing training and employment
opportunities for long-term unemployed people; it also offers low-cost, high-quality,
environmentally sustainable products.
There are numerous good news stories in the area of enterprise and employment supports.
Mayo County Council has invested substantially in major tourist infrastructure through
89
the Great Western Greenway project. The Greenway has already helped to create 38
new full-time jobs and a further 56 full-time jobs have been sustained.
Cork County Council has established a joint initiative with the Nimbus Centre in
the Cork Institute of Technology (CIT) and Mallow Development Partnership. The aim
of the initiative is to create a real-life test-bed in Mallow, County Cork, for a stream of
products that have been tested in the laboratory at CIT. This is leading to an enhanced
testing infrastructure and environment in Mallow, and it is hoped that this in turn will
lead to products from other third level institutions and companies being tested there
(see Quinlivan, 2013).
Conclusions
Local government in Ireland is more complex than might first appear to be
the case. There are enormous weaknesses within the system, including lack of
constitutional protection; low autonomy; few functions; political, administrative,
functional and financial centralisation; increased managerialism; and the
rationalisation of councils. Yet, as mentioned earlier, in an individual, often
uncoordinated, way, local councils are playing innovative roles in economic
development and policy formulation. Local authorities are also pushing the
boundaries with a variety of democratic reforms aimed at enhancing participation
in policy making and policy analysis. This chapter has highlighted how CCC has
embraced the PPN model and created a proper policy consultation process with
community ownership. The synergy from working collaboratively is resulting in
better decision making and enhanced policy outcomes.
In many ways, Irish local government continues to be a mass of contradictions,
as wonderfully summed up by Quinn (2015, p 26): ‘The reform path to date
represents a unique blend of innovation, incrementalism and entrenchment aimed
at tackling persistent challenges regarding the form, functioning and financing
of local government.’
Notes
1 The doctrine of ultra vires prohibits local authorities from undertaking any action that is not
specifically authorised in statute.
2 Liaison entre actions de développement de l’économie rurale (Links between the rural economy and
development actions).
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Advisory Expert Committee on Local Government Reorganisation and Reform
(1991) Local Government Reorganisation and Reform, Dublin: Stationery Office.
Barrington, T. (1991) ‘Local government in Ireland’, in R. Batley and G. Stoker
(eds) Local Government in Europe, Basingstoke: Macmillan, pp 155–69.
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Byrnes, J. and Dollery, B. (2002) ‘Do economies of scale exist in Australian local
government? A review of the research evidence’, Urban Policy and Research,
20(4): 391–414.
Callanan, M. (2018) Local Government in the Republic of Ireland, Dublin: Institute
of Public Administration.
Callanan, M. and MacCarthaigh, M. (2008) ‘Local government reforms in Ireland’,
in B.E. Dollery, J. Garcea and E.C. LeSage (eds) Local Government Reform: A
Comparative Analysis of Advanced Anglo-American Countries, Cheltenham: Edward
Elgar, pp 104–32.
Callanan, M., Murphy, R. and Quinlivan, A. (2014) ‘The risks of intuition:
size, costs and economies of scale in local government’, The Economic and Social
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Collins, J. (1954) Local Government in Ireland, Dublin: Institute of Public
Administration.
Collins, N. and Quinlivan, A. (2010) ‘Multi-level governance’, in J. Coakley
and M. Gallagher (eds) Politics in the Republic of Ireland (5th edn), London:
Routledge, pp 359–80.
Considine, J. and Reidy, T. (2015) ‘Baby steps: the expanding financial base of
local government in Ireland’, Administration, 63(2): 119–48.
CCMA (County and City Managers’ Association) (2013) Submission to Local
Government Efficiency Review Implementation Group, Dublin: CCMA.
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and Expenditure Programmes, Dublin: Department of Finance
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of the Local Government Efficiency Review Group, Dublin: Department of the
Environment, Heritage and Local Government
Downey, J. (1991) ‘Bill is a legislative monstrosity’, Irish Independent, 13 May.
Elcock, H., Fenwick, J. and McMillan, J. (2010) ‘The reorganisation addiction in
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Dublin: Stationery Office
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Government and Local Development Systems, Dublin: Stationery Office.
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Government, Dublin: Department of the Environment and Local Government.
Government of Ireland (2008) Stronger Local Democracy: Options for Change, Dublin:
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Policy Committees, Dublin: IPA and Department of the Environment, Heritage
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in 39 countries’, Regional and Federal Studies, 26(3): 321–57.
Lee, J.J. (1989) Ireland 1912–1985: Politics and Society, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
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to the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government, Dublin:
Stationery Office.
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F. Hendriks and A. Lidström (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Local and Regional
Democracy in Europe, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp 48–67.
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Administration Abroad, London: HMSO.
Martin, L.L. and Schiff, J.H. (2011) ‘City-county consolidations: promise versus
performance’, State and Local Government Review, 43(2): 167–77.
Quinlivan, A. (2011) Inside City Hall Politics: A Year in the Life of Cork City Council,
Cork: Echo Publications.
Quinlivan, A. (2013) ‘Irish councils fight back against cuts with jobs, tech and
collaboration’, The Guardian, 13 November.
Quinlivan, A. (2017) ‘Reforming local government – must it always be democracy
versus efficiency?’, Administration, 65(2): 109–26.
Quinn, B. (2015) ‘Local government reform – plus ça change, plus c’est la même
chose?’, Administration, 63(2): 7–29.
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SEVEN
Committees and the legislature

Bernadette Connaughton
Introduction
As the legislature, Oireachtas Éireann has three main tasks in policy making:
providing legitimacy for public policy; participating in the legislative process; and
performing control and scrutiny functions. This chapter focuses on policy analysis
and observes these tasks from the perspective of the role of legislators in Dáil
Éireann. It also explores the historical and contemporary role of parliamentary
and other political committees, and the institutional supports that enable their
function in policy making. Arguably, the sheer dearth of assistance and resources
available to Teachtaí Dála (TDs) has contributed to an underwhelming legislative
performance over time. Developments since 2011 provide an important context
for exploring the role of the Irish parliament in policy analysis in this chapter,
given the relative deficiencies in earlier reform initiatives and the systemic policy
failures highlighted by the crisis. An agenda to introduce political-administrative
reform post-2011 included building policy analysis capacity within the Oireachtas
and addressing the significant imbalances in executive–legislative relations. The
chapter begins with a sketch of the Irish parliament to provide an outline of
the constitutional underpinning of the Irish parliament and its relationship
to government. It then proceeds to discuss the degree to which Dáil Éireann
developed a role in policy analysis, including an outline of key reforms from
2011. In particular, three areas of interest are explored: access to information
and research capacity for policy analysis, including the emerging Parliamentary
Budget Office (PBO), which may encourage more meaningful contributions
in the public policy process; the development of the committee system and its
activities; participation in inquiries.
A background sketch of the role of the Irish legislature

Academic scholarship has considered both the degree to which the design and
operation of the Dáil has been influenced by the British Westminster archetype
and its capacity to participate in the policy-making process (MacCarthaigh,
2005; Lynch et al, 2017). Parliaments derived from the Westminster model
tend to exhibit powers of appointment and dismissal, scrutiny of the executive
branch, and law making. These features correspond with the functions that the
Constitution apportions to the Oireachtas. First, the appointment of the Taoiseach
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and the government (Articles 13 and 28), and second, law-making powers are
assigned exclusively to the Oireachtas (Articles 15 to 27). Article 28.4.1 indicates
an oversight role, since it states that the ‘government shall be responsible to
Dáil Éireann’. Although classical democratic theory states that the legislature
makes laws and the executive carries them out, the term ‘Westminster model’ is
associated with centralised executive power and a compliant legislature (Lijphart,
2012). In practice the government controls the political agenda and there are
few checks on the executive in parliamentary systems as long as the government
holds a majority support in the legislature. Commentators on Ireland concur
with this and consistently support the view that the Dáil is an exceptionally
weak and politically disempowered legislative institution or ‘puny’ parliament
whereby reforms fail to address the balance of power between the legislature and
the executive (Chubb, 1992; Murphy, 2006).
A primary duty of legislatures is to act as representatives and a conduit to
those they represent, since part of their participation in policy making is to
communicate, represent, debate and provide legitimacy for the system as a whole.
In Ireland, executive and party political dominance prevails due to the existence
of the whip system whereby members must vote as instructed by the party or
else lose their membership; a historical lack of resources and weak committee
system; use of standing orders; and Ireland’s own particular brand of an individual
legislator that is more likely to be disproportionately engaged in constituency
affairs. Party cohesion has remained high in Ireland and it is only in unusual
circumstances that a deputy will disobey the party line, since mutiny is harmful
for their chances of promotion within the political family. Individual deputies
have, however, dissented from party positions on socially sensitive issues such as
abortion or controversial economic decisions. There is strong evidence that the
electoral system plays a role in encouraging TDs to focus on parochial needs and
constituency work above that of legislative/policy work, leading to deputies to
direct additional resources into constituency affairs (MacCarthaigh, 2005). The
collective impact of these characteristics has reduced the potential for the Dáil to
play a proactive role in the policy process (see Chapter Thirteen, this volume).
The role of the legislature in policy analysis: committees, access to

information and research capacity, inquiries
Policy analysis involves a systematic evaluation of the technical and political
implications of the alternatives proposed to resolve public policy issues. In
parliamentary systems the legislature undertakes to hold government accountable
to the public as opposed to holding sway in making or implementing policies.
In practice, the decision-making stage of the policy process is emphasised to the
neglect of parliaments in pre- and later policy stages (Russell and Crowley, 2015).
As a highly centralised political system, the level of control wielded by the Irish
executive in policy making ‘is practically unrivalled anywhere else in Europe’
(MacCarthaigh, 2005, p 217).
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Parliament’s ability to uphold accountability and act as a transmission

belt between parliament and the people, however, is also affected by several
factors besides executive dominance, including the pressures of the external
environment, such as the influence and insider status of global business in policy
formulation. Ireland’s experience of the 2008 financial crisis bore the imprint
of global and European influences and was also conditioned by multiple home-
grown governance and policy failures. The crisis exposed the significance of
not having an effective committee system and the weaknesses in policy-making
scrutiny and analysis. This included the manner in which the national parliament
conducted its business and the general weakness of the Oireachtas as a ‘regulator
of regulators’ (EIU, 2009, p 53). The control of information from the Department
of Finance and the enormous information deficit about complex banking and
financial developments prevented real debate and oversight of measures such as
the September 2008 bank guarantee and the February 2013 liquidation of Irish
Bank Resolution Corporation. The emergency nature of some crisis-related
measures also placed pressure on the normal conduct of Oireachtas business.
Conversely, the Eurocrisis from 2009 resulted in extensive regulatory reforms
of European and domestic financial systems and led to the Oireachtas spending
substantial time on banking-related legislation. The magnitude of these issues
led to further calls for the clarification of accountability roles across the political-
administrative system and for an increase in the powers of parliamentary committees
within a wider political reform process (MacCarthaigh, 2013). This was strongly
advocated in the general election in 2011, which brought changes to the political
party landscape whereby support for the historically dominant party of government
(Fianna Fáil) collapsed. Although the momentum for delivering the promised
reforms waned, ‘a number of discrete, but potentially significant, changes to the
operation of business in parliament’ were introduced (Lynch et al, 2017, p 38).
A minority government established after the 2016 election promised to swing
power away from the executive and back to the legislature. It encouraged a more
assertive position being taken by opposition parties in the Dáil and reinvigorated
the intentions to progress procedural reform and enable legislators under a label of
‘new politics’. A sub-committee on Dáil Reform was formed and its final report
made a series of recommendations, a number of which have been implemented.
Several reforms focused on allowing more independence for the Dáil and less
government ‘grip’, including those on the election of the Speaker (Ceann
Comhairle) and legislative input (Houses of the Oireachtas, 2016). The impact
of these reforms has been less impressive, however, since a greater emphasis on
consensus meant that the Dáil was slower to progress a legislative agenda. In
the first year of the 32nd Dáil, only 20 Acts were signed into law, which was
historically the joint lowest number for an Dáil in its first year (Irish Statute
Book, 2016–2017). New politics was characterised by the reality that minority
governments are unable to command a majority in the Dáil and reforms in
Dáil procedure result in a longer process overall for legislation. The following
discussion focuses on the legislature’s role in policy analysis in the post-2011
95
period, as well as considering the reforms and efforts to improve professional

research capacity to facilitate budgetary cycle reforms.
TDs as legislators and Oireachtas committees

This section considers the activities of Teachtaí Dála in the policy cycle through
their work as individual legislators proposing legislation and in committees. A
Bill must pass through the various stages in both Houses of the Oireachtas (Dáil
Éireann, or lower house, and Seanad Éireann, or upper house); it is customary
that the executive attempt to exert close control over timing and no substantial
amendments are generally made during this process.1 The powerlessness of the
Dáil is reflected in both the legislative process and in the committee system,
despite the latter’s relatively strong formal powers (Martin, 2010). Prior to the
1980s, Dáil and Seanad committees were few in number, and those that did
exist were mere ‘housekeeping’ committees looking after the internal affairs of
Leinster House. Between 1983 and 1994 and after 1997, several initiatives were
introduced to establish a comprehensive committee system, starting with the
Fine Gael–Labour coalition that instigated a debate on Oireachtas reform in
early 1983. The government effectively dominated the appointment of chairs,
manipulation of the rules of procedure, and little effort was made to promote
cross-party consensus on any matter (MacCarthaigh, 2005, p 103). An exception
is the Committee of Public Accounts (PAC), which is regarded as the most
powerful of all standing committees and examines the accounts of government
departments by deliberating the audit reports of the Comptroller and Auditor
General on public expenditure.
Resources, a minimal secretariat staff complement, and an overwhelming
workload further diminished the scrutiny role of committees. For example,
the Joint Committee on European Union Affairs – in an earlier format – was
originally tasked with the impossible undertaking of scrutinising European
Union (EU) secondary legislation. In reality, there is little scrutiny of the use
of secondary or ‘delegated legislation’ and statutory instruments in particular.
These are used regularly for transposing EU directives into Irish law as ministers
and their departments are allowed to make regulations under the European
Communities Act 1972. Technical details are worked out by specialised units
and authorities with responsibility for delivery away from parliamentary input
(Connaughton, 2019). Over time, the EU committee was shaped into a different
role through providing a platform for academics, politicians, non-governmental
organisations and visiting delegations to debate on policy and interact with
legislators on EU affairs. Its function is now more aligned with providing a
general oversight function in relation to EU affairs, whereas the EU scrutiny
of sectoral issues is mainstreamed across all joint committees and inevitably has
added to their workload.
The reforms from 2011 aimed to make the Dáil a more significant actor in
the policy-making process, and to use committees to examine legislation before,
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rather than after, it goes to the full parliament. In terms of Irish parliamentary
procedure, standing orders have changed only very gradually and often in
an unstructured way (Caffrey, 2010), thereby acting as a disincentive to any
substantive legislative input from TDs. The reforms include the establishment of
a new Business Committee and Committee on Budgetary Oversight; an increase
in the number of committees and time allocated to committee hearings; the
extension of pre-legislative scrutiny to non-government bills; the introduction
of a formal post-legislative scrutiny process; and an increase in scheduled time for
Private Members’ Bills (PMBs). Prior to this, the Taoiseach had an exclusive right
to set the plenary agenda and the opposition could only influence the agenda
through proposals for PMBs. The government has the power to introduce late
amendments to Bills in order to ensure control over them and under Dáil standing
order any Bill that involves the appropriation of revenue or public money must
be initiated by a member of the government.
In the Dáil, the government has traditionally managed to control the agenda by
using its majority to guillotine debates and dispose of all remaining stages of a Bill
in a single vote. During the 31st Dáil, the government used the guillotine power
more frequently than its predecessor and this became controversial (Lynch et al,
2017), as it may result in flawed legislation being passed if the opposition does not
get the chance to examine a Bill thoroughly, or discuss all proposed amendments.
For example, despite the management of water services and charging for water
being a politically sensitive and complex policy issue, the Water Services (No. 2)
Act 2013 was rushed through all parliamentary stages in the Dáil in just over
four hours on 19 December 2013, amid protest from the opposition on the lack
of opportunity for debate. The Act provided for the transfer of water services
functions and assets from the then 34 water services authorities to a new state
utility Irish Water, which became mired in controversy. A business committee
established in June 2016 now meets weekly to agree the agenda for Dáil business,
including speaking time, and is composed of representatives from all parties and
groupings. This diminishes the prospect of the government in unilaterally using
the guillotine.
The committee structure has been re-established after each election since 1997
and, like other parts of the political-administrative apparatus, has experienced
pressures from an expansion in the volume of government policy. Overall,
its efforts to monitor departmental work, discuss estimates and deal with the
third stage of legislation are generally overstretched. The democratic quality of
TDs’ committee membership should enhance their legitimacy and the reforms
introduced in 2016 build on the existing committee system. But it is clear that
changes to rules alone will not drastically transform the position of parliament
within the policy-making system (Gallagher, 2018). Further, even if changes to
procedure remove some of the unnecessary blockages to effective committees,
the incentives for politicians to prioritise committee work have not changed and
that will determine whether reforms support a stronger role for parliament in
policy analysis. Political priorities dominate and an example of how committees
97
have been used to make cross-party recommendations on policy options is the

Joint Committee on the Future Funding of Domestic Water Services. Water
charging was a contentious issue in the negotiations on government formation
in 2016 and it was agreed to establish advisory forums on the effectiveness of
Irish Water, including an Oireachtas committee to make recommendations to
the Dáil. The advisory proposals of the joint committee that heard evidence and
legal advice from an array of actors, including European Commission officials,
were included in the Water Services Bill 2017.
A new Committee on Budgetary Oversight now scrutinises the annual
budgetary cycle to provide ex-ante input to the budgetary process, and to
complement the ex-post scrutiny undertaken by PAC. Prior to this, the
Dáil’s involvement in the budgetary process would generally have consisted of
individual TDs making representations to various ministers. The work of the
committee involves reviewing macro-economic and fiscal matters that scaffold
budgetary considerations, EU fiscal rules, demographic pressures and challenges
to ensure the sustainability of public finances. To some extent, its formation can
be attributed to European influences since the Euro semester has changed the
budgetary timeline and the Oireachtas now has more time to perform a scrutiny
role in budgetary affairs. As a result, a ‘whole-of-year’ budgetary cycle involves
the Oireachtas and the committees at an earlier stage of the process (see Chapter
Seventeen, this volume).
The reform with the most potential to augment the role of the Oireachtas
in policy analysis is the introduction of pre-legislative scrutiny (PLS), whereby
committees can opt to review the ‘general schemes of Bills’ and hear from experts
before Bills come to parliament in published format. It was gradually introduced
from 2011 and retained in the 32nd Dáil. The benefits include adequate time for
more considered, better legislation, and committee’s observations on a draft Bill
are sent to the sponsoring minister (Oireachtas Library and Research Service,
2014). Ministers have no obligation to respond to the committee but some
ministers have met with the committee to discuss its report (Lynch, 2017, p 78).
This more reflective approach and potentially increased capacity for scrutiny
should result in more effective implementation at the latter end of the policy
cycle. In a study on the impact of PLS, on legislative and policy outcomes,
Martin (2018, p 5) identified that PLS can have ‘real and substantive impact on
Government legislation in the Irish case’. An example of a Bill ‘fundamentally
altered’ by PLS is the Gender Recognition Bill 2014, whereby a revised general
scheme was subsequently brought to cabinet and issues raised in PLS framed
debate on the legislation at a later stage of the legislative process. In contrast, PLS
had much less impact on the Misuse of Drugs (Amendment) Bill 2015 but at the
same time the process is deemed to have brought ‘greater clarity to the intentions
behind legislative proposals’, thereby improving them (Martin, 2018, p 8). The
study also indicated that in a content analysis of 50 PLS cases, 467 unique
recommendations were made from committees and ministers accepted 41.7%
of these suggestions (Martin, 2018, pp 30–2). The Joint Committee on Justice,
98
Defence and Equality concluded the most PLS exercises. Overall, Bills continued
to be amended at the formal committee stage and there was no instance of PLS
substituting a committee’s remit in the overall legislative process. In addition, by
engaging in PLS, a joint committee may carry out public consultation and involve
stakeholders. This serves to deepen TDs’ knowledge of the policy context and
should enhance their engagement in the legislative process at a later stage. This
is to the benefit of the policy-making system, since it demonstrates democratic
legitimacy, and the Irish administration’s experience with engaging stakeholders
and citizens in policy consultation is in any case patchy. PLS differs in that it
involves the scrutiny of legislation that has been enacted in order to assess whether
it is fit for purpose and its legislative objectives are being achieved.
An increase in scheduled time and support for PMBs and motions also allows
TDs more time to engage in policy analysis. This has traditionally been restrictive,
with government rules limiting TDs’ ability to propose PMBs (MacCarthaigh,
2005, pp 112–13); it also prevents independent TDs and small parties from
promoting a PMB and means that larger opposition parties can only sponsor one
at a time. Whether this facilitates PMBs is questionable and although many pass
the second stage, they proceed to stagnate at the committee stage and do not
proceed to report and final stages. The observation remains that ‘government
departments are unwilling to cede power, over the drafting and content of laws,
to the Oireachtas’ (Howlin, 2018). Other issues include the quality of legislation
being tabled, since little or no expertise in drafting legislation is required to get a
Bill discussed in the Dáil. As a result, the legislation being tabled is perceived to be
of poor quality and requiring substantive work to bring it up to scratch. A legal
advisory service has thus been established to help TDs with drafting legislation
and providing independent legal advice to that offered by the government.
Further, Article 17.2 of the Constitution states that any proposed cost to the
exchequer in a Bill must be approved by government in advance. Despite the
new politics, only five PMBs had become law by 2018 – including a Fianna Fáil
Bill to recognise Irish sign language; a Fine Gael Bill banning fracking, and a Bill
tabled by a group of independent senators allowing the sale of alcohol on Good
Friday. This would indicate that the reforms in this area are neutered and have
resulted in a grinding, time-consuming system whereby legislation is effectively
languishing. In contrast, previous Dáileanna operated more efficiently in that a
majority government was safe in the knowledge that it had the votes to carry
the relevant legislation.
Access to information and research capacity

TDs and committees need access to accurate, quick, independent information
in order to undertake policy analysis functions. For decades, the support services
in the Dáil and Seanad remained badly under-resourced in their levels of library
and research functions and in general resource/staffing services in comparison
with other Westminster-style systems, or by international standards (Deloitte and
99
Touche, 2002). The advent of a stronger committee system raised the question
of the professional policy analysis demands on TDs required to do their job
effectively. Yet in 2002, the Oireachtas had only one legal officer and three
researchers for 226 members, and the level of personal support for deputies and
senators necessitated assistance from family members and volunteers (O’Halloran,
2010, p 139). A study by Deloitte and Touche (2002) noted that while 88% of
members availed of research support, half considered it as poor.
The parliamentary reform agenda did, however, progress this issue and
in 2004 a new parliamentary Library and Research Service was established,
followed by a Legislative Analysis Service (LAS). In terms of direct assistance
for TDs, the position of parliamentary assistant was created in 2005. This new
political staff appointment was proposed as support to help TDs with speeches,
research and legislation, and to coordinate with the media on their behalf. What
generally transpired was an extension of TDs’ duties to include constituency
work/representations. This poses the question of whether the support was being
invested in raising the bar in terms of TDs’ legislative performance, policy acumen,
committee work, and ability to contribute substantively to the political issues
of the day, or whether the additional resources were being disproportionately
directed to constituency matters.
The establishment of the PBO in 2017 is an example of how the Oireachtas
is striving to develop its research capacity and access to information. The
role of the PBO is to provide impartial information, advice and analysis to
members of the Oireachtas, in particular those who serve on the Committee
on Budgetary Oversight, which steers ex-ante scrutiny of all budgetary matters.
The introduction of a PBO forms part of the reforms conducted by the political
administrative system in coming to terms with the critical challenges of the crisis
decade and for undertaking sound fiscal management. Arguably, several budgetary
institutions already perform this budgetary analysis role, namely the Oireachtas
Library and Research Service, the Department of Finance, the Department
of Public Expenditure and Reform, the Central Bank and the Fiscal Advisory
Council, which performs a watchdog function in reviewing fiscal issues and debt
sustainability. What distinguishes the PBO is that its office is an independent one
and it is an institution of the legislature and not, as in the case of the Department
of Finance, the executive. One of the experiences of the 2008 financial crisis was
the withdrawal of the Department of Finance into a silo, which made the scrutiny
role of the Oireachtas even more ineffectual. A PBO, by contrast, is required
to appear before committees in order to explain its costings on various policies.
At the request of the Oireachtas in 2015, the Organisation for Economic
Co-operation and Development (OECD) conducted a review of budgetary
oversight by the Irish parliament. It concluded that Ireland had the lowest level
of effective parliamentary engagement in budgeting among the OECD countries
and that stakeholders did not consider the Houses of the Oireachtas to engage
with the budgetary process in a meaningful or impactful way (OECD, 2015). In
particular, the OECD pointed to a deficiency of ex-ante scrutiny of budgetary
100
and financial issues, since virtually all scrutiny of the budget was ex post (OECD,
2015). It recommended scrutiny throughout all stages of the budget cycle and
setting up a PBO, as exists in other Westminster-style countries like Australia
and Canada. The PBO also complements the work of the Fiscal Advisory
Council and enables the Dáil and committees to engage more effectively in
fiscal business, such as Estimates of Expenditure and budgetary proposals. The
Programme for Government 2016 committed to the establishment of a PBO and
the Final Report of the Sub-Committee on Dáil Reform (Houses of the Oireachtas,
2016a) recommended that it should be set up on a statutory2 rather than an
administrative basis. The PBO is led by a non-partisan and independent director
and a technical staff of 13, incorporating a critical mass of economists. It produces
a range of information from short notes to lengthy briefing papers, including a
Quarterly Economic and Fiscal Commentary, and its director briefs members
of the Committee on Budgetary Oversight in advance of meetings with the
Minister for Finance or officials. PBO publications have covered issues such as
preliminary budget reviews, the economic impacts of a disorderly Brexit, the
changing demographics of Irish health expenditure, and the potential exchequer
implications of the Climate Action Plan 2019.
In terms of impact, the desired effect is to use an independent unit within
parliament to enable the legislature to play an effective role throughout the budget
cycle and be on a more equal footing with the executive (Anderson, 2009). This
remains optimistic, given the technicality of the issues and the volume of expertise
resident in the Departments of Finance and Public Expenditure. The PBO,
however, serves to corroborate costings analysis and is developing a mechanism
for independent evaluation work. The overall objective is to elevate the level
of discussion and debate in Dáil committees. Among its challenges is how it
can extend its impact beyond the members of the Committee on Budgetary
Oversight and communicate effectively with other Oireachtas members to ensure
that its work does not end up becoming generally relegated to perceptions of
being selective, or an academic exercise. Further, the office needs to build and
retain strong skills in economics and policy analysis.
Role of inquiries
Whereas the committee system is regarded as the potential engine of a robust
policy analysis role in the Oireachtas, parliamentary and judicial inquiry has
been utilised to diffuse controversies and investigate policy failures. A series of
revelations of corruption and policy incompetence in the 1990s in particular drew
attention to issues such as tax evasion, corruption in the planning system and
the irregularities within the beef industry and overlapping scandals. The various
tribunals of inquiry consequently introduced to explore these events proved to
be a very expensive and inadequate substitution for an appropriate and timely
committee system. The potential for using parliamentary inquiry mechanisms
was, however, impeded by a decision of the Supreme Court in Ardagh v Maguire
101
[2002] IR 385. The court endorsed the power of the Oireachtas to hold such
committees but confined their investigatory remit and ability to make findings of
fact and culpability to within the immediate radar of government departments.
This was compounded by a failed referendum held in October 2011 to revise
the Constitution to permit each House of the Oireachtas to hold inquiries
to make findings of fact against individuals. The government’s reaction was
the introduction of the Houses of the Oireachtas (Inquiries, Privileges and
Procedures) Act 2013, which states in section 17(3) that a committee may ‘make
a finding that any matter relating to systems, practices, procedures or policy or
arrangements for the implementation of policy which fall within the subject [of
the inquiry] ought to have been carried out in a different manner’. The first
inquiry to be set up under this legislative framework was the Joint Committee of
Inquiry into the Banking Crisis in November 2014, which had been promised by
both Fine Gael and Labour in the run-up to the election in 2011. Fundamental
to its rationale and remit was the failures of private banking and public policies
in the run-up to the crisis, and the bank guarantee decision of September 2008,
which had disastrous consequences for the public finances. The inquiry took
place over 49 days of hearings, 131 witnesses gave testimony, 57 support staff
were employed and €6.6 million were spent in order to explore why the banking
crisis cost the Irish taxpayer €64 billion. Its report was published in three volumes
(Houses of the Oireachtas, 2016b). On completion of the inquiry, two deputies
refused to sign the report and some of the committee members commented
that no further inquiries should be held under the 2013 Act due to its ‘self-
imposed restrictive inquiry structure’ (Donson and O’Donovan, 2016). The
inquiry is an illustration of how the poor functioning of parliamentary oversight
before the crisis was, ironically, in turn investigated by a committee hamstrung
by its terms of reference and procedures. It was also viewed by the public as
being shaped by party politics rather than an investigatory culture to secure
accountability (Hancock, 2016) or a mechanism for concretely investigating both
the underlying political accountability and reform of the policy-making process
in a non-partisan manner.
The committee members were placed under considerable pressure to produce
a substantive report containing analysis and implementable recommendations
within the timeframe involved. What transpired were no hard recommendations,
gaps in the evidence due to the time-frame, and conflicting evidence about who
came up with the bank guarantee decision (Donson and O’Donovan, 2016).
The inquiry did make public many documents relating to the crisis that had
not previously been in the public domain. It also exposed the myth that if the
blanket bank guarantee had not been made that night, the banks would not
have been able to open the following morning. It also cast more light on the
circumstances around Ireland’s entry into the bail-out programme, the role of the
European Central Bank (which did not directly participate), issues around official
preparedness for the crisis, and attempts by the Irish government to impose
losses on bondholders. However, it failed to make any unfavourable findings
102
against private bankers due to flaws in the legislation covering the work of
parliamentary inquiries (Hancock, 2016). In a general sense, the banking inquiry
demonstrated that while issues of public controversy and policy fiasco have been
routinely directed towards such inquiries, the Oireachtas is not endowed with
the competences, capacity and resources to deliver on them.
Conclusion
In parliamentary systems, the legislature traditionally plays a restrictive and
indirect role in policy making. This is judged on the basis that policy is principally
predetermined by the executive and its relationships with policy communities. The
performance of the Houses of the Oireachtas is no exception to this assumption
and is historically regarded as an exceptionally weak legislature (MacCarthaigh,
2005; Murphy, 2006). The imbalance in executive–legislative relations and how it
has served to largely exclude the Irish parliament from playing a meaningful role
in policy making has been long observed (MacCarthaigh and Manning, 2010;
Lynch, et al, 2017), and yet, despite the executive’s dominance and control of
the policy agenda, it would be inappropriate to overlook the role of the Irish
parliament in policy analysis. Parliament forms part of the policy advisory system
as one of the ‘proximate decision makers’ and it has a procedural and political
advisory role to play in policy formulation (Howlett, 2019).
This chapter has highlighted that a long-sought, fundamental reform was called
for in order to enhance the capacity of the Oireachtas to engage in policy
analysis. Although such sentiments were repeatedly suggested over time, there
was insufficient political determination to genuinely invest in, and implement,
a substantive reform agenda. The reforms from 2011 represent the most serious
attempt to enable the Dáil to become a less peripheral actor in the policy-
making process and support individual legislators, particularly in the context of
the budgetary cycle. A strong parliament’s meaningful input to policy analysis,
however, requires a strong committee system and this needs further attention. In
general, inquiries have not fostered public confidence or enhanced accountability
in the policy-making process. They have, however, spotlighted the failures of
the Oireachtas to function with an appropriate oversight of public policy and
discontinue abuses in public office.
Notes
1 There are two types of Bill, namely government Bills and Private Members’ Bills. There is a
five-stage process for introducing Bills: initiation; debating the general principles of the Bill; the
committee stage where a Bill is examined section by section and amendments made if necessary;
the report stage (which is the last opportunity for members to make amendments to the text
of a Bill); and the final stage where the Bill is passed by the house (Dáil Eireann). Gallagher
(2018, p 174) notes that in effect only the second stage ‘through outright rejection’ and the third
stage ‘through amendment offer the house any real opportunity to affect the content of a bill’.
2 Houses of the Oireachtas Commission (Amendment) Act 2018.
103
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105
EIGHT
Policy analysis in the civil service

Richard Boyle and Joanna O’Riordan
Introduction
One of the core roles of the civil service is to advise ministers and the government
of the day on policy. Policy analysis – developing and testing ideas about policy
proposals – is central to this role. In interpreting this policy advice role, the civil
servant is operating at the interface of political and administrative systems. The
traditional doctrine of ministerial responsibility, set out in the Ministers and
Secretaries Act 1924, holds the minister to be the ‘corporation sole’, so she or
he is legally responsible for every action of the department. In practice, of course,
this is a fiction. Murray (1990, p 70) outlines the traditional view of many civil
servants on this issue:
In our system of parliamentary democracy I see the responsibility for

policies lying primarily with ministers, not alone in a formal, legal
sense, but also in a practical sense. Civil servants, however, have their
own responsibilities. They cannot adopt a passive role, content to
operate existing policies without regard to their continuing validity
or relevance, refusing to consider whether changes are required by
changing circumstances. They have a responsibility to advise ministers
on the need for change and to press this advice as forcefully as they can.
Within the constitutional and legal requirement of governmental-ministerial

accountability with the minister as corporation sole, the Public Service
Management Act 1997 introduced a new management structure to the civil
service. As MacCarthaigh (2008, p 81) notes:
In relation to the policy-administration divide, the Act specifies

that the responsibility for policy objectives and agreeing necessary
results lies with ministers, while secretaries general advise ministers
and ensure their department produces the necessary results…. The
managerial role of secretaries general is much more explicit as a result
of the Act.
Murray (2008, p 112) has identified the vital role of providing advice and wise
counsel at the interface of the political and administrative systems:
107
… the delivery of advice inhabits a restricted domain occupied by

those who must make decisions central to a country’s wellbeing and
those appointed to provide them with counsel that is well judged,
independent, evidence-based and timely…. To state the obvious, the
delivery of public services ultimately depends on the quality of policy
decisions. No amount of capacity to deliver services efficiently will
make the wrong service a good one. Yet how the capacity to provide
wise counsel is shaped remains unclear. Policy emerges from an
unstable brew of political-administrative interaction, analysis, evidence,
judgement, expediency and incident.
Historically, in the Whitehall tradition inherited by Ireland, a civil servant good

at policy advice was required to have strong conceptual skills, be reflective and
thoughtful: a ‘generalist’ uncommitted to partisan viewpoints. This led to an
emphasis on recruits from the liberal arts and classics rather than professional or
technical backgrounds. In the 1960s and 1970s, an alternative viewpoint began
to emerge, with the concept of a ‘policy analyst’, a practitioner of policy analysis,
defined by Wolf (1982, p 546) as:
… the application of scientific methods to problems of public policy,

choice and implementation in domestic, international and national
security affairs. Its successful pursuit depends on familiarity with the
social sciences, economics and the physical sciences, competence in
a number of analytical techniques and the ability and confidence to
move across disciplinary lines….
The reality is that the complexity of many policy issues means that they can only
be addressed by a blend of skills and expertise. Policy analysis requires knowledge
of the relevant discipline under scrutiny and some skills in quantitative analysis,
combined with the more traditional policy capabilities. However, this distinction
between generalists with broad conceptual skills and specialists with quantitative
analytical skills, and finding the appropriate balance between them, continues to
influence developments with regard to policy analysis in the civil service, as will
be seen throughout this chapter.
And, of course, as the earlier quote from Murray (2008, p 112) highlights,
policy analysis is only one element in the policy process. In the making of policy,
many different interests are present who have to be consulted, brought along,
and sufficient consensus generated to support implementation.
This chapter focuses on policy analysis developments in the civil service from
the early 2000s, and in particular on changes that have taken place since the
impact of the global financial crisis of 2008. The financial crisis acted as a catalyst
for significant reforms in the practice of policy analysis. The following section
examines the background to policy analysis developments, exploring the reasons
why change was viewed as necessary. The chapter then looks at a number of
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organisations and supports available to government in developing policy. This is

followed by a review of developments in policy analysis in the civil service, with
much of the focus on a review of activities in response to the financial crisis.
Finally, the chapter draws some conclusions as to the effect of these changes on
policy analysis and outline some thoughts on future developments.
Background
The quality of policy analysis and advice available from the Irish civil service
came under detailed scrutiny at the time of the global financial crisis. A number
of official reports (Honohan, 2010; Regling and Watson, 2010; Wright,
2010; Nyberg, 2011) highlighted the limitations of policy advice and analysis
carried out in the context of the banking crisis. Wright’s (2010, p 23) critique
of policy decision making in the lead-up to the recession in 2008 indicated
that the government’s budgetary process was completely overwhelmed by two
dominant processes: programmes for coalition governments and the social
partnership process.
Programmes for government were seen as marginalising the impact of
parliament and of the civil service in its scrutiny role, and restricting the scope
for rigorous analysis of policy options (Ó Cinnéide, 1999). Social partnership
(formal multi-annual agreements between the social partners of government, the
main employer groups, the trade unions and representatives of the voluntary and
community sector on pay and key social policy issues) had been widely praised as
a pre-eminent reason for Ireland’s recovery from the recession of the 1980s and
the creation of the ‘Celtic Tiger’ economic boom (see Chapter Ten, this volume).
However, as the economic situation deteriorated, the process of social partnership
was seen as accelerating the momentum for spending and contributing to the
consequent deterioration of competitiveness of the Irish economy. Again, it was
seen as limiting the scope of policy analysis, through closing off discussion and
assessment of alternative policy options.
One commentator noted the view that official policy advice and decision-
making processes in Ireland were overly secretive and cartelised, with too much
power lying with vested interests, including elements of the political establishment
and the bureaucracy itself (Barry, 2009). Two former senior civil servants noted
the pressures on civil servants to restrict their analysis of policy options, and the
impact this has had on the quality of policy analysis:
In our view, the quality of the formal analysis of policy issues carried out by the
civil service has deteriorated over the years, partly as a result of a tendency towards
increased circumspection arising from freedom-of information legislation and
partly due to increased work pressures and other factors. It is now more common
to find a single policy viewpoint and recommendation formally recorded in
the relevant documentation, rather than a range of differing opinions being
expressed as to the preferred policy option. This does not mean that there are
no differing views or that different options are not considered, just that they are
109
often mediated before a policy submission to ministers is finalised (Lumsden and

Mangan, 2013, p 155).
The restricted number and role of specialists in the civil service has also been
highlighted as a limitation on policy analysis in the civil service:
Another institutional factor impacting on the use of research was the

balance in analytical expertise between the civil service and the wider
public service. Whereas in most countries policy details are designed
by specialists within government departments, in Ireland the specialist
knowledge became fragmented across a growing number of specialist
agencies, and in some cases within private sector consultancies. As
a consequence, many government departments had little specialist
knowledge or resources to analyse and develop policy. This further
reduced the likelihood of research being used. (Ruane, 2012, p 127;
see also Chapters Four and Five, this volume)
The need for more specialist policy advice was also noted by FitzGerald (2012)
when discussing how to restore credibility in policy making in Ireland. He
focused mainly on the policy failures in respect of the financial and fiscal systems,
and pointed to, among other things, the need for more specialist expertise in
the public administration. In the context of the failure of fiscal policy he notes:
‘Lurking behind the weak response of the Department of Finance was a culture
that discouraged undue emphasis on economics. The tradition until now has been
that for civil servants to progress through the ranks they need to be generalists
not specialists’ (2012, p 32).
Finally, in a civil service context, it is important to remember that programme
managers and special advisers have been a feature of the political-administrative
landscape in Ireland for many years and they can have a prominent, and sometimes
disputed, role in policy development (see Chapter Seven, this volume). Quinn
(2008, p 217), a former cabinet minister, felt that the system of programme
managers liaising together worked well. However, others have criticised the
system for excessive cost, and politicisation of the administration through the
employment of party staff affiliates on the public payroll (Connaughton, 2002,
p 14). Special advisers are political appointments; advisers are employed to provide
expert advice, and offer guidance of a political nature on individual policy issues
(Connaughton, 2002 p 14). As with programme managers, some commentators
have identified a positive role for such staff. A review of experience in New
Zealand by Eichbaum and Shaw (2007, paragraph 3.2) found:
… many of the senior officials who participated in one of our

surveys made it clear that special advisers have an important role
to play in protecting them from demands from Ministers which
might, were they required to submit to them, expose officials to the
risk of politicisation…. Providing everyone is clear about roles and
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responsibilities, then, it may be that special advisers actually make it

easier for officials to conduct themselves in ways which are consistent
with traditional understandings of civil service impartiality.
In order to support the development of senior managers within the civil

service, a Senior Public Service (SPS) was established in 2011, though to date
it only includes top management from the civil service. The aim of the SPS
is to strengthen senior management, leadership and collaboration across the
civil service. A system of coaching and development opportunities have been
introduced as well as a mobility programme. In respect of all vacancies to arise
at Assistant Secretary level, there is now the possibility of filling them through a
lateral move by an Assistant Secretary from elsewhere in the civil service. Despite
the turnover in senior management occasioned by this initiative, at present it is
seen as a positive development as it broadens the experience of those involved.
With high levels of experienced and long-serving managers due to leave the
Irish public service over the next decade, succession planning has also emerged
as a key area. Within the civil service it has been indicated that up to 10,000 staff
are eligible to retire over the next five to ten years (DPER, 2017). The situation
is exacerbated by the two major recruitment embargoes during the 1980s and
more recently after the financial crisis in 2008. In some organisations, this means
that there is a diminished cohort of potential successors for future leadership
roles. Furthermore, as noted by Freyens (2010, p 271) ‘leadership is not acquired
through leadership seminars and country retreats, but by building in-house
experience and mentoring high quality recruits’. There are further associated
concerns about the ongoing loss of corporate memory and core skills at middle
management level due to retirements. Capturing and in some way retaining the
knowledge and expertise of departing employees is as important as recruiting
their replacements, but as noted by O’Riordan (2019, p 9), few organisations
have policies or initiatives in this regard.
Supports for government in developing policy
National Statistics Board

An important requirement in improving policy making is better evidence,
including data (see Chapter Five, this volume). The National Statistics Board
(NSB) was initially set up on a non-statutory basis in 1986. It was established on
a statutory basis when the Statistics Act 1993 came into operation in November
1994. Its function, set out in the Act, is to guide the strategic direction of the
Central Statistics Office and, in particular to:
• establish priorities for the compilation and development of official statistics;

• assess the resources of staff, equipment and finance that should be made
available for the compilation of official statistics; and
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• arbitrate, subject to the final decision of the Taoiseach, on any conflicts that
may arise with other public authorities relating to the extraction of statistics
from records or to the coordination of statistical activities.
The NSB prepares five-year strategies for statistics, following an extensive

consultative process, for agreement by government.
A number of organisations provide advice to government to support the
policy-making process. These include organisations such as the Institute of
Public Administration and the Economic and Social Research Institute, as well
as a wide range of lobby groups and interest groups who offer their views on
public policy making and provide a useful source of information, albeit from
a particular viewpoint. However, two organisations have a particular mandate
to advise government in respect of policy: the National Economic and Social
Council (NESC) and the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council (IFAC) (see Chapter
Eleven, this volume).
National Economic and Social Council

The NESC was established in 1973. Its function is to analyse and report to
the Taoiseach on policy issues relating to sustainable economic, social and
environmental development in Ireland. The members of the NESC are
appointed by the Taoiseach, for a three-year term. These members are
representatives of business and employers’ organisations, trade unions, agricultural
and farming organisations, community and voluntary organisations, and
environmental organisations, as well as heads of government departments and
independent experts.
The composition of the NESC means that it plays an important and unique role
in bringing different perspectives from civil society together with government. Its
work is supported by the NESC secretariat. The work programme is decided on a
three-year basis, by the NESC, with input from the Department of the Taoiseach.
Irish Fiscal Advisory Council

IFAC is an independent statutory body whose purpose is to provide an
independent assessment of official budgetary forecasts and proposed fiscal
policy objectives. It comprises five, government-appointed IFAC members and
a secretariat.
IFAC was established on an interim basis in July 2011 and put on a statutory
footing in December 2012 by the Fiscal Responsibility Act. The introduction
of the Act was part of a wider agenda of budgetary reform, and the European
Union/International Monetary Fund Programme of Financial Support for
Ireland. The legislation also guarantees the independence of IFAC, which has
a legal obligation to make its views known to government and to publish its
assessments. Its areas of responsibility include:
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• assessing and endorsing, as it considers appropriate, the government’s official

macroeconomic forecasts;
• assessing budgetary forecasts;
• assessing the broader fiscal stance;
• monitoring compliance with fiscal rules.
Policy analysis developments in the civil service

This section examines a number of the more important developments in policy
analysis since the early 2000s, with most significant developments happening in
the aftermath of the financial crisis in 2008 and the bank bailout in late 2010.
Regulatory Impact Analysis

Regulatory impact analysis (RIA) was introduced in the civil service in 2005.
RIA is viewed as a systematic, consistent and transparent framework to assess the
impacts of government regulatory action. It is an ex-ante tool for policy analysis
in the regulatory sphere, a core element of government work. A review of the
operation of RIA in 2008 recommended actions designed to build on progress
that had been made in relation to RIA since its introduction. Subsequently in
2009, the government published revised RIA guidelines.
The government also issued a statement on economic regulation in 2009.
This contained proposals to increase the transparency of strategy and results
for regulators, enhance the monitoring capacity of departments over agencies,
establish new networking arrangements between departments and agencies and
between agencies and stakeholders, and introduce increased support for research
and training in regulation.
On the regulatory reform front, a former civil servant has suggested that in the
absence of a central department overseeing the Better Regulation agenda, no
evidence is being assembled and presented regarding the quality of RIAs being
produced. Moreover, there is no driving force to disseminate the results of RIAs
(Ferris, 2013). RegGov (2012) noted that while the government is committed to
requiring departments to publish RIAs before government decisions are taken,
‘There are a number of bills before the Oireachtas with significant regulatory
aspects and potential costs for businesses for which no RIA has been published’
(2012, p 2). It is not possible to assess the rigour and depth of analysis prompted
by the introduction of RIA, despite it now being in existence for over a decade.
Organisational Capability Reviews

Organisational Capability Reviews (OCRs) were instigated in Ireland in 2006,
broadly following a similar United Kingdom (UK) initiative (O’Riordan,
2011). They were designed to be reviews of organisation capacity focusing on
strategy, delivery and evaluation. Seven departments and offices were reviewed
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before the initiative was suspended in the aftermath of the financial crisis and
with considerable pressure on public service resources. Action 20 of the Civil
Service Renewal Plan (DPER, 2014, p 31) contained a commitment to relaunch
the initiative, the purpose being ‘to embed a culture of regular and objective
assessments of the capacity and capability of each Department to achieve its
objectives and take the necessary action to close any gaps’.
As a result, a new system of OCR to assess and strengthen performance and
capacity across departments is being implemented. The new programme is very
similar to the original initiative, with the exception of the juxtaposition of
leadership and evaluation as an overarching theme and a sub-theme. The new
review format is set out in Table 8.1.
Table 8.1: Organisation Capability Review methodology

Delivery Strategy Leadership
• M anaging performance and • Developing policy and strategy • Setting strategic direction
stakeholder focus • Decisions grounded in evidence • Collaborating and building common
• Governance, organisational structure • Focus on outcomes purpose
and risk management • People management and HR
• Focus on implementation capability
Source: DTTS (2018)
Reviews have been completed of the Department of Transport, Tourism and

Sport (DTTS), the Courts Service and the Department of Business, Enterprise
and Innovation (DBEI). A review of the Department of Culture, Heritage and
the Gaeltacht is being finalised in late 2019, while a review in the Department
of Housing, Planning and Local Government has commenced. Approximately
two reviews are undertaken at any one time, with the work being done by a
small OCR unit in the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform (DPER).
In the two published reviews of departments responsible for the development
and analysis of policy (DTTS and DBEI), capacity in this regard is highlighted
as one of the central conclusions. In both cases, it is suggested that the impact
of the recession and high staff turnover are still being experienced. While large
numbers of unfilled positions are no longer an issue, the loss of long-serving,
experienced and knowledgeable staff, the widespread filling of vacancies within
the departments by inevitably less experienced staff, and the ‘churn’ in staff
occasioned by the return of promotion and mobility opportunities, represent a
cause for concern. In both cases, it was recommended by the review teams that
the departments’ capacity to produce policy and strategy required considerable
further investment. For example, the DBEI review concludes that ‘the Strategic
Policy Division currently lacks the critical mass of specialist staff needed to
support the various and diverse policy business units across the Department. As
a result, the depth of analysis in individual sectors of the economy has reduced’
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(DBEI, 2018, p 9). Similarly, in the case of DTTS, the review team notes that ‘the
Department’s capacity to produce policy and strategy needs further investment’
(DTTS, 2018, p 15). In their action plans developed in response to the reviews,
both organisations commit to prioritising these concerns.
The pace of completion of reviews is slow, with only three reviews published
since the scheme was relaunched in 2014. However, departments and offices that
have gone through the process have indicated in their action plans that they found
them very beneficial as a means of reviewing organisation capacity. In the first
iteration of the scheme, composite reviews were carried out by Murray (2010)
and Boyle (2012a, 2012b). These were valuable, independent commentaries,
with Murray (2010, p 89) commenting: ‘It is noteworthy that a considerable
number of the challenges that require organisations to change are ones that have
service wide origins and will require a public service wide integrated response.’
It would seem desirable that a similar analysis of the current round of reviews is
also undertaken.
Evaluation, budgeting and policy analysis

The government committed to implementing a number of evaluation-related
measures in the context of a revised budgetary and expenditure framework
introduced in 2011. These new measures included the following:
• the use of evaluations in periodic comprehensive reviews of expenditure,

including both departmental-based and thematic evaluation reports;
• the introduction of the Irish Government Economic and Evaluation Service
(IGEES) as a cross-government service to enhance the role of economics and
value for money analysis in public policy making;
• changes to the programme review process, known as the Value for Money and
Policy Review (VFMPR) process, including more targeted reviews, alignment
with the expenditure allocation process and greater involvement for parliament
in the selection and assessment of reviews;
• the introduction of focused policy assessments, more narrowly focused
assessments designed to answer specific issues of policy configuration and
delivery and complement the VFMPR process;
• the introduction of a Public Spending Code to bring together good practice
guidance on evaluation and appraisal;
• the creation of a public service evaluation network to help build capacity.
The IGEES, established in 2012 is a particularly important initiative with regard

to policy analysis in the civil service. Economists have been specifically recruited
and appointed to the service. After initial training mainly based in the central
departments of Public Expenditure and Reform, Finance and the Taoiseach, these
recruits are moved into dedicated analytical units in government departments.
They remain in a department for a couple of years and then move on to another
115
department or office. The number of IGEES staff increased from approximately

30 in 2012 to 160 in 2018 (see Chapters Four and Five, this volume).
The IGEES began to publish its economic evaluations in 2014, exposing policy
development in a manner that was previously unusual for Irish government
(MacCarthaigh, 2017). Some early public commentary by an academic economist
on the work produced by the IGEES suggests it is having as positive impact on
policy evaluation (Kinsella, 2014). The DTTS provides an example of good
practice in creating a departmental IGEES unit that has produced a number of
good quality studies.
The IGEES is a specific response to the critique of the civil service that it
did not employ enough specialists with strong analytical capacity, particularly
economists, after the financial crisis. It draws from the experience of the
Government Economic Service that has been in operation in the UK civil service
since 1964, and which is responsible for the recruitment and development of
economists there. While the plan is that IGEES is here to stay, one challenge
for the future will be maintaining the core of expertise developed within this
specialist area. Previous efforts to develop a similar cadre of specialists in public
policy analysis in the 1970s and again in the 1990s in the Irish civil service were
stymied as people were promoted out of the analyst cadre, and maintaining
capacity at an adequate level became a problem. This time around, a more
structured approach to the development of the service is being applied, which
provides some hope that it will be maintained.
With regard to the evaluation regime more widely, the VFMPRs are seen as an
important source of policy analysis and advice on the efficiency and effectiveness
of government expenditure programmes. While these reviews have produced
much useful information, Boyle (2014) suggests that many departmental-based
evaluations undertaken under the rubric of the VFMPR initiative have been of
limited use for resource allocation decisions and prioritisation between competing
areas of expenditure. An assessment was undertaken of recommendations
contained in 19 VFMPR reports published by government departments
between 2011 and June 2014, as well as in five evaluation papers produced by
the Central Expenditure Evaluation Unit in DPER on cross-cutting issues. Of
the 428 VFMPR recommendations assessed, only 1% recommended programme
or part-programme termination and 5% substantial redesign. The overwhelming
majority (94%) recommended more modest programme adjustments. By way of
contrast, the recommendations produced by the Central Expenditure Evaluation
Unit in DPER in its cross-cutting evaluation reports are more likely to suggest
substantial redesign of the programme (55% of the 29 recommendations) or
programme/part-programme termination (10%).
There have been linked efforts to combine policy analysis more effectively with
the budgetary process through a reformed budget process introduced following
criticism of the process that existed prior to the financial crisis. With regard to
policy analysis, a 2005 review by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation
and Development (OECD) found that budget oversight by the Irish parliament
116
was underdeveloped by international standards. The OECD proposed moving

from what it describes as a disconnected series of annual set pieces to an ongoing
engagement by parliament throughout the course of the budgetary cycle. A
central aim is to rebalance away from the formal authorisation of financial
allocations towards ex-ante interactions on policy priorities and performance.
The government accepted the OECD recommendations, and has made changes
to the budgetary process.
The Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO), set up in 2017 to provide
independent and impartial information, analysis and advice to the Houses of the
Oireachtas (parliament), has been particularly active in producing analysis for
parliamentarians to enhance budgetary scrutiny. It is a significant new player on
the analytical scene, providing analytical papers for parliamentarians on a range
of budgetary issues. However, it is too early yet to assess the impact of the PBO
(see Chapter Seven, this volume).
The Spending Review is another important element of the new budgetary
process. The purpose of a Spending Review is to increase the fiscal space
available to government for new, high-priority policies. Three-year rolling
reviews see departments review government spending over a three-year period.
IGEES is core to delivering the work on the Spending Review. The 2019
Spending Review culminated in the publication of 30 analytical papers, published
alongside the government’s Budget 2020. This built on the output from 2017
and 2018. These analytical papers can be found on the DPER website1 and on
the IGEES website2.
While the Spending Review process has been welcomed as a useful and
important initiative, in a review of the operation of Spending Reviews, the
PBO (2019) noted a number of limitations:
• While the Spending Review has a level of political commitment from the
Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, there is little involvement by
ministers of line departments who are affected by the policy implications
of the findings and may be responsible for implementing these findings or
recommendations. There is also little interaction between the Spending
Review process and the Irish parliament.
• While the Budget includes a discussion of some of the findings from the
Spending Review, the link between findings and budgetary decisions is not
clear. Greater clarity around how the results of spending review papers feed
into budgetary decisions is needed.
• While the participation of line departments in the process has been
increasing in recent years, the current process is largely carried out by DPER,
the central budget authority on the spending side. Increasing the ownership
of line departments in the review process could further improve the quality
of reviews, align departmental responsibility with scrutiny of their votes
by committees, and achieve greater motivation in terms of implementing
review findings.
117
Opening policy analysis to the public

As part of the Civil Service Action Plan (DPER, 2014, Action 22: Strengthen
policy-making skills and develop more open approaches to policy making), a new
system of open policy debates to involve networks of practitioners, academics and
experts at the early stages of policy development was introduced in 2015. Since
2015, 46 open policy debates have been held on a range of policy issues including
childcare, housing, Food Wise 20253, the River Basin Management Plan, the
National Risk Assessment and public investment in research and development.
There have also been innovative efforts to engage citizens more broadly in
policy deliberation. A prime example is the Constitutional Convention set up to
deliberate on proposed amendments to the Constitution, including such issues as
provisions for same-sex marriage, reduction of the voting age, and increasing the
participation of women in politics (see Chapter Fifteen, this volume). Work is
advancing throughout 2019 on the development of guidance for policy making
to support departments on the fundamental stages of policy making and ensure
a consistent approach is embedded throughout the civil service.
Conclusion
That the civil service should play a central role in policy making is a given. While
ultimately the government of the day, elected by the people, decides policy, it
is a core function of the civil service, particularly at the senior level, to provide
well-judged, evidence-informed, independent and timely counsel to government.
How well the civil service does this was thrown into sharp relief by the financial
crisis and recession of a decade ago. Since then, some notable improvements
have been made to enhance policy analysis capability and capacity within the
civil service. Wide-ranging initiatives have been developed to enhance policy
analysis, particularly in the economic sphere. IGEES in particular represents a
positive development. A stronger evidence base is emerging to better inform
policy making.
However, the impact of these developments is dependent on the interplay
between analysis and advice, and the capacity of the political system to process
the advice. As noted in the introduction to this chapter, policy analysis is only
one factor influencing policy advice given by the civil service, and ultimately a
political decision is taken as to what weight is given to that advice. There is also
cause for concern that while appropriate initiatives are in place, the manner in
which they are implemented means that their impact in practice has been limited.
According to one economic commentator, in a recent assessment of civil service
project appraisal and the impact of the Public Spending Code:
It is time to place the procedures for evaluating and selecting major

projects on a statutory basis through a new Public Investment Act,
designed to make real the good intentions of the Public Spending
118
Code. Projects above a certain scale should require advance assessment,

side by side with competing demands on the capital budget, by an
independent agency staffed for the purpose. (McCarthy, 2019)
The emergence of the IGEES has meant that more specialists in analysis have
been recruited into the civil service, shifting the balance from one where
generalists were the norm. Getting the balance right is a difficult challenge, as
both specialists and generalists are needed and important in a well-functioning
civil service. While the recruitment of more specialists into policy analysis is a
welcome development, there is also a need to retain the strengths that generalists
can bring in terms of their broad perspectives and wide-ranging experience.
Policy analysis and policy making are never easy and never will be, but they
are a central responsibility of the civil service and efforts need to be dedicated
to these areas by senior managers on an ongoing basis. As the late John Murray,
Professor of Business at Trinity College, Dublin, put it so eloquently:
The civil and public service is not a value free, amoral, social mechanism
of delivery. Its legitimacy and the security of civil society rests in its
capacity to preserve and assert its independence, to never fail in its
commitment to probity and in its skill in ‘speaking truth to power’.
If that capacity is lost, political advisors, consultants, outsourcers and
various charlatans and sorcerers quickly begin to drive the strategic
management process; ‘spin’ drives government and the legitimacy of
the state and government is readily undermined. (Murray, 2008, p 112)
Notes
1 www.per.gov.ie
2 www.igees.gov.ie
3 Food Wise 2025, an initiative of the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine sets out
a ten year plan for the agri-food sector. It underlines the sector’s unique and special position
within the Irish economy, and illustrates the potential which exists for this sector to grow
even further.
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NINE
Europeanised policy making in Ireland

Mary C. Murphy
Introduction
Ireland’s decision to join the European Union (EU) on 1 January 1973 constitutes
the most important foreign policy decision by the Irish state since its foundation
in 1921. Ireland’s membership of the EU over a period of near five decades
has been punctuated by periods of both volatility and stability: Irish economic
fortunes have been mixed, public support for the EU has vacillated, policy
developments have sometimes been controversial, structural funds have been
welcomed, and social progress has transpired. On balance, membership of the
EU has been good for Ireland (Murphy and O’Brennan, 2014). Being part
of the EU family has aided Ireland’s global positioning and its ability to cope
with the demands of international economic competition. EU policy initiatives
have sometimes challenged domestic constituencies opposed to change; the civil
service and political system have been exposed to new (and better) ways of
working and managing common problems; and political elites have acquiesced
to EU-inspired models of best practice. Pragmatic engagement with the EU has
tended to be the hallmark of the Irish experience (Laffan and Tannam, 1998) and
being part of the EU has produced distinct patterns of adaptation and contestation
at the domestic Irish level. In other words, the Europeanisation process, as it has
played out in Ireland, has produced some (although not always extensive) patterns
of convergence with EU approaches, outputs and norms.
In short, EU membership has had an impact on myriad domestic issues, sectors
and policies. Since accession, the Irish economy, political system, institutions and
policies of the state have been influenced and sometimes challenged – to varying
degrees – by a series of diverse Europeanising forces. Importantly, domestic
policy changes often have broader implications, since the process of problem
solving and the use of policy instruments are invariably linked to the wider
legal, political and administrative environment (see Héritier et al, 2001). The
Europeanisation of public policy therefore is felt and experienced in tandem
with some Europeanisation of institutions, and processes and procedures. The
resultant process of Europeanisation has played a part in shaping not just Irish
public policy, but also the wider Irish polity since 1973 (O’Brennan, 2012, p 94).
Using a Europeanisation frame, this chapter measures and explains the process
of and impact of EU policy analysis in Ireland. The EU context can constrain
the policy analysis process. A capacity for autonomous action by national actors
123
is limited by the legal commitments that attach to EU membership and require

the transposition of EU legislation into domestic law. This means that the room
for manoeuvre in terms of choosing from a suite of policy options is necessarily
limited. The constraints, however, have their limits. The extent to which the
EU restricts policy analysis is linked to whether the process of Europeanisation
is ‘hard’ or ‘soft’ (Ladrech, 2010). ‘Hard’ EU policy influence relates to those
legislative and policy proposals that entail legal responsibilities. ‘Soft’ EU policy
influence refers to processes including the Open Method of Coordination
(OMC) that are not legally binding but invariably produce an effect at the
domestic level. A number of illustrative policy case studies are employed here to
demonstrate a variety of Europeanisation effects across the Irish policy analysis
spectrum. The chapter identifies the challenges and constraints facing Ireland’s
policy analysis landscape as it relates to the EU context and concludes with
a critical overview of the relationship between the EU and policy analysis
in Ireland.
Europeanisation: the concept

‘Europeanisation’ has enjoyed significant academic press since it was first
conceptualised by Ladrech (1994); see also analyses by Featherstone (2003) and
Mair (2004). Ladrech’s (1994, p 69) early definition of Europeanisation described
it as ‘an incremental process reorienting the direction and shape of politics to
the degree that EC [European Community] political and economic dynamics
become part of the organizational logic of national politics and policy-making’.
Ladrech’s early work focused explicitly on a top-down perspective that sought
to determine how the EU shapes institutions, processes and political outcomes
in member states (and also third countries). A growing scholarly focus on the
Europeanisation concept has progressively added depth and substance to the
precise meaning and import of Europeanisation. Some measure of contention,
however, still permeates the study of the concept. Nevertheless, Europeanisation
is broadly understood as a process of domestic adaptation to European integration
(Vink and Graziano, 2008, p 7). It has been utilised across diverse disciplines to
the point where it has gradually developed into a distinctive research agenda
with its own questions, theories and methods. Studies of Europeanisation have
embraced all facets of the political domain, including policies, institutions,
political parties and polities themselves, and have been marshalled in different
ways by different scholars.
A classic definition of the Europeanisation phenomenon is that proposed by
Radaelli (2003, p 30), who defines it as consisting of:
… processes of a, construction, b, diffusion and c, institutionalization

of formal and informal rules, procedures and policy paradigms,
styles, ‘ways of doing things’ and shared beliefs and norms which
are first defined and consolidated in the EU policy process and then
124
incorporated in the logic of domestic (national and subnational)

discourse, political structures and public policies.
Consequently, Europeanisation has wide application and relevance across a variety

of domestic domains and emerges as a key mechanism of change affecting the
formal practice of national sovereignty and all that entails for individual member
states (Radaelli, 2006). Europeanisation effectively involves an examination of
‘whether and how states download EU policies and institutions that subsequently
give rise to domestic change’ (Börzel and Panke, 2019, p 116). As the EU
has evolved and its policy competences have increased, this type of analysis is
consequential for national institutions, policy outputs, political parties, interest
groups and public opinion. These aspects of domestic life are – to differing
degrees – buttressed, moderated, challenged or antagonised by influences
emanating from Brussels. Significantly, however, the Europeanisation process
has not produced convergence of national politics, policies or polities. Instead,
member states appear to adjust differently to the demands of EU membership
and so experience Europeanisation in distinctive ways.
Olsen has identified five uses of the term Europeanisation.1 He accepts, however,
that the notion of Europeanisation as ‘change in core domestic institutions of
governance and politics, understood as a consequence of the development of
European-level institutions, identities and policies’ is the most common use of
the term (2002, p 932). Radaelli’s (2000) ‘domains of Europeanisation’ specifically
identifies areas where the effects of Europeanisation might be experienced. This
includes political structures, structures of representation and cleavages, cognitive
and normative structures and public policy. Featherstone (2003, p 5) notes
that Europeanisation is applied within four broad categories as: ‘an historical
process; as a matter of cultural diffusion; as a process of institutional adaptation;
and as the adaptation of policy and policy processes’. Ladrech’s (2010) study
of Europeanisation and national politics examines the impact of Europeanising
forces across multiple facets of national life, including the national court system,
executive, parliament and a variety of policy areas.
The sweep of Europeanisation literature suggests two important assumptions
about how Europeanisation affects EU member states. First, the impact is
differential across both member states and policy areas, and second, as noted
by Börzel (2005, p 50), ‘the differential impact of Europe is explained by the
“goodness of fit” between European and national policies, institutions and
processes, on the one hand, and the existence of “mediating factors” or intervening
variables that filter the domestic impact of Europe, on the other hand’.
A ‘misfit’ manifests itself in one of two ways, as either a policy misfit, where the
difference between the domestic and EU policy is significant, or an institutional
misfit, which sees an EU proposal or provision challenge domestic rules,
procedures and collective understandings. Adaptational pressures to conform
and comply with EU policies are dependent on the overall ‘goodness of fit’
between the EU and the domestic level and can vary between being more or
125
less extensive. Such pressures, however, regardless of their strength and intensity,
may be resisted by domestic forces. In this context, it has been argued that:
‘a consensus has grown around the need to understand [Europeanisation] as
a two-way relationship, but one that has been modelled primarily in terms of
the downward flow of effects’ (Bache, 2007, pp 11–12). The Europeanisation
process at the domestic level, however, can experience ideological, political and
cultural resistance that may limit or derail the impact of Europeanising forces.
In effect, domestic resistance is often significant and consequential, and recent
Europeanisation studies have recognised the potential strength of the domestic
arena as a mediating factor. This is where a process of Irish policy analysis finds
its niche.
The impact of Europeanisation on public policy necessarily takes different
forms and can, in principle, affect all elements of public policy, including actors,
resources, policy instruments and policy style. The process of measuring the
Europeanisation of public policy, therefore, is not merely a case of judging how
well member states implement EU policies; it is more specifically concerned with
the (differential) content of policy and what happens during the policy (analysis)
process and its implementation at the member state level. The literature broadly
notes that the process of the Europeanisation of public policy offers five possible
outcomes: inertia, absorption, accommodation, transformation and retrenchment
(see, for example, Risse et al, 2001; Radaelli, 2003).
The EU policy process, and its application at the domestic level, is influenced
and determined by the broader and diverse EU legal framework within which
policy is agreed and implemented. Ladrech (2010) distinguishes between ‘hard’
and ‘soft’ forms of Europeanisation of public policy. Where the EU policy
influence is ‘hard’, this denotes a policy framework that is legally bounded and
results in binding commitments. This is linked to ‘market correcting’ and ‘market
making’ policies (or what are also known as first-pillar EU competences). Policy
influence, however, also has a soft form when EU activities do not have a strong
binding or legislative dimension. Policies derived through the OMC generally fit
this category. The OMC was created to further the Lisbon Strategy and covers
policy areas in the economic, employment and social policy realm. OMC is
distinct from the established ‘Community method’ of EU policy making. Where
the Community method relies on supranational governance processes, OMC
is based on intergovernmentalism and voluntary cooperation that aims not to
compel, but instead to induce best practice across member states. Radaelli (2003,
p 43) defines OMC as ‘a policy transfer platform rather than a law-making
system’. This approach to the policy process leaves room for a deeper process
of policy analysis because it allows individual EU member states to formulate
tailored and implementable policy that suits specific national needs.
A notable dimension of the Europeanisation process is a tendency to
characterise the process as one that is based on an inexorable forward momentum.
This interpretation of the Europeanisation effect is increasingly invalid and has
recently been challenged by events, namely the 2008 global financial crisis and
126
the United Kingdom (UK) decision to the leave the EU (Brexit). An emerging
de-Europeanisation literature offers some means to capture the extent to which
Europeanisation can be challenged, undermined or derailed at the domestic
level. Aydin-Düzgit and Kaliber (2016, p 5) define de-Europeanisation as ‘the
loss or weakening of the EU/Europe as a normative/political context and as a
reference point in domestic settings and national public debates’. It points to a
process of dealignment from the EU, involving a reversal from EU rules, norms
and values. Copeland (2016, p 1126) identifies de-Europeanization as ‘a process
of disengagement combined with the intentional decision to reverse the impact
of Europeanization’. The Europeanisation literature has also been criticised for its
failure to recognise other (non-EU) factors that might also account for domestic
change (see Bulmer and Burch, 2005). In other words, the assumption that policy
developments are intrinsically linked to a process of Europeanisation overlooks
the possibility that such developments might have evolved organically in the
absence of Europeanising forces.
Europeanisation: the Irish experience

Europeanisation in Ireland is experienced in multiple ways. Institutions, policies
and laws differ in how they respond and react to Europeanising forces, and EU
influences can be moderated by domestic and other external developments. This
reading of Europeanisation is confirmed by a discrete body of Irish scholarly
work that has examined Europeanisation from an Irish perspective. Hayward and
Murphy (2010) have studied the impact of Europeanisation on political parties
on the island of Ireland. Rees and colleagues (2009) note evidence that Irish
institutions and policies have experienced a degree of Europeanisation. Adshead’s
(2005) study found that dimensions of Europeanisation were affecting the Irish
state’s traditional conservative and clerical character. There are also a number of
policy-based explorations of the extent to which specific policies in Ireland have
been Europeanised. This broad collection of work suggests that the Irish policy
process, political system, state institutions, legislative and non-legislative activities
encounter Europeanisation in different ways and to differing degrees. In other
words, the impact of Europeanisation is far from uniform. Two illustrative case
studies are employed here to sketch out the ways in which different types of
policies experience Europeanisation in the distinct Irish setting. In the context
of policy analysis, this includes determining how extensive or decisive the EU
is, relative to other factors, in shaping that policy landscape. Two different types
of policy are explored: policies formulated using the traditional Community
method; and policies based on the OMC.
Case study 1: Community-method policies

The Community method denotes that policies are determined by cooperation
between supranational and intergovernmental EU institutions whose outputs
127
are guided by legal rules. The bulk of EU economic, social and environmental
matters are subject to the Community method of decision making. In Ireland,
these wide-ranging policy areas have experienced degrees of Europeanisation
from extensive to limited as seen in the cases of environmental and cohesion
policy respectively.
Environmental policy
In the environmental realm, Ireland is historically noted as an environmental
policy latecomer. Flynn (2019, p 93) observes that Ireland has been heavily reliant
on EU environmental policy leadership: approximately 76% of environment-
related statutory instruments introduced in Ireland between 1995 and 2016
originated in the EU. The quantity of EU legislation to which Ireland is subject,
however, offers only a partial picture of how the EU has influenced the Irish
environmental policy sphere. Having been a traditionally underdeveloped policy
area, approaches to environmental policy in Ireland have advanced and there
has been some experimentation with new mechanisms and instruments. The
National Economic and Social Council (NESC) (2010, p 123) notes that there
has been ‘a shift from a relatively centralised, top-down model of regulation
– the so-called “hard law” approach – towards combining this with a more
collaborative, decentralised approach that puts an emphasis on learning from
experience rather than simple compliance with EU law’.
For example, the EU’s Water Framework Directive included provisions for
increased public participation and triggered major public investment in Ireland’s
water system, and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) were involved in the
implementation of the EU Habitats Directive. The environmental policy sphere
can also point to the achievement of some progress in terms of the establishment
of the independent Climate Change Advisory Council, agreement on a Climate
Change Act, and a citizens’ assembly on how the state can make Ireland a leader
in tackling climate change (see Chapter Fifteen, this volume). Importantly,
however, not all of these developments have been a consequence of ‘hard law’
EU requirements and so do not owe their origins to the EU. In these instances,
Europeanisation has been neither instrumental nor influential. Developments
were instead influenced by domestic and other external influences. So despite
EU membership playing some role in driving an historically laggardly approach
to Irish environmental policy, law and institutions, the extent to which this
comprises strong evidence of Europeanisation is limited. There has also been some
resistance to Europeanisation in the Irish environmental policy sphere’. In her
study of the implementation of environmental policy in Ireland, Connaughton
(2019) notes that administrative shortcomings and domestic opposition to EU
environmental policies challenge the strength and effect of Europeanisation and
produce a pattern of weak implementation and non-compliance (see also Torney
and O’Gorman, 2019).
128
Cohesion policy
An examination of EU cohesion policy in Ireland also demonstrates the extent to
which EU influence has both benefits and limits. Cohesion policy is one of the
most important and financially significant of EU policies, capable of mobilising
a large number of institutional and non-institutional supranational, national and
subnational actors (Piattoni and Polverari, 2016, p 1). Ireland has benefitted
extensively from EU financial support through the EU’s cohesion policy. For
the period 2014–20, Ireland received €3.36 billion in European structural and
investment funds from the EU to support socioeconomic development through
targeted assistance for specific sectors and initiatives. In addition to financial
support, however, EU cohesion policy also anticipates policy and institutional
impact at the domestic level, which empowers the regions or subnational levels.
Adshead, however, (2014, p 428) notes that: ‘despite the acknowledged and
extensive role of EU structural and cohesion funds in Ireland, changes to the
fundamental policy architecture of the state were minimal’. The recalibration
of Ireland’s spatial territory from the late 1980s with the identification of new
statistical regions, followed in 2014 by the creation of three regional assemblies and
the reform of local government structures, did not radically alter the historically
strong, centralised and unitary political character of the Irish state (Adshead, 2014,
p 424). Callanan (2019) explicitly notes that Europeanisation pressures to adapt
Irish territorial governance (both top-down and bottom-up) have been filtered
through domestic traditions and norms that have had limited consequences for
national, regional and local government structures. In contrast, however, the
impact of EU cohesion policy rules and styles (both formal and informal) have
had a more enduring effect. Adshead (2014, pp 424–5) identifies examples of
both policy diffusion and policy institutionalisation related to Europeanisation
that have become streamlined components of the Irish policy landscape. These
include policy principles such as programming, monitoring, control, evaluation
and partnership.
For other policy areas, the impact of Europeanisation is similarly patchy and
distinct in terms of how it effects policy styles and institutional norms. Elliott
(2019) notes that Ireland’s specific (geographic) circumstances mean that migration
policy has only incrementally converged towards EU norms. In the realm of
foreign policy, O’Brennan (2012, p 97) finds that patterns of Europeanisation have
reinforced existing tendencies towards executive control of Irish foreign policy.
At a macro level, the policy analysis process – as it relates to EU Community
method policies – requires the acceptance of policy proposals and prescriptions
emanating from Brussels. The Europeanisation literature, however, demonstrates
that national policy makers still have some room for manoeuvre in terms of how
they navigate and implement EU policy commitments. Overall, the EU policy
analysis process in Ireland is attentive to domestic circumstances and can be
characterised as pragmatic, selective and sometimes creative, in terms of how it
engages with this category of EU policies.
129
Case study 2: OMC policies

Early social policy developments in Ireland, based on EU directives (or hard
law), included the introduction of legislation in the areas of anti-discrimination,
equality, and workplace health and safety. Dukelow and Considine (2017)
characterise these developments as important. Since 2000, however, key elements
of social policy have been pursued using the OMC. OMC is a core instrument
of the EU’s approach to macro-economic, employment and social policies. It
allows the EU to coordinate policies in specific fields but without the adoption of
binding legislation. Instead, it involves agreeing guidelines at the EU level, which,
although non-binding, nevertheless require member states to adopt national action
plans designed to give effect to specific policy targets and recommendations. The
Europe 2020 initiative (which succeeded the Lisbon Strategy) was launched in
2010 and is designed to coordinate progress towards a series of headline targets,
including increasing employment, reducing poverty rates and fighting social
exclusion. The strategy employs soft law tools, particularly policy learning, as a
key means to achieve policy coordination.
Ireland’s response to the OMC European Employment Strategy (EES)
demonstrated alignment with key EU guidelines and produced some changes
in policy and practice at the national level. This did not extend, however, to
improved engagement with the social partners and stakeholders as also proposed
by the EES (Murphy, 2002). Nevertheless, from a policy analysis perspective,
NESC (2010, p 109) notes that: ‘the [EES] OMC did demonstrate a capacity to
prompt significant development in domestic thinking and policy [in Ireland]’.
Issues around social inclusion are also subject to the OMC. Notably, Ireland
had already established an anti-poverty strategy (during the 1990s) before it was
introduced through the EU’s OMC procedure. Later, the Europe 2020 strategy set
targets for lifting 20 million people out of poverty (including 200,000 in Ireland).
In addressing this challenge, Ireland has taken some note of OMC guidelines.
However, this has not extended to wider forms of financial or ideological change.
Traditional patterns of welfare expenditure in Ireland have not altered. O’Brien
and Ó Fathaigh (2007) note that there has been no ideological or paradigmatic
shift in how Ireland approaches, for example, educational disadvantage as a
key element of the social inclusion agenda. And NESC’s 2010 (p 14) report
notes that in the social inclusion policy sphere, ‘the process of goal setting, data
generation, monitoring and review was less effective and led to limited diagnostic
inquiry into Ireland’s problems’. There are nevertheless, positive and progressive
aspects to engagement with OMC policies. For example, Ireland is considered
to have one of the more developed consultation processes among EU countries
(Mangan, 2010). Notably, however, engagement with stakeholders was tested
pre-OMC when the National Anti-Poverty Strategy (NAPS) was first rolled out.
The EU focus on anti-poverty measures has therefore supported and facilitated
development of that approach, but it was not the trigger for its use in Ireland. In
her study of the relationship between the NAPS and the OMC, Adshead (2010,
130
p 143) shares this view and notes that the EU has helped to shape contemporary
Irish attitudes to more deliberative forms of public policy making in the form of
social pacts and partnership. However, in terms of policy content and orientation,
Ireland’s anti-poverty strategies have not been substantially Europeanised.
The policy analysis process linked to OMC policies is less restrictive than
its Community method equivalents. There is greater scope for national policy
makers to be flexible and selective in terms of how they respond to EU
guidelines. Overall, the force of Europeanisation in the OMC policy sphere in
Ireland is limited. Although the EU has been influential, particularly in terms of
supporting a more deliberative and participative approach to policy development,
the domestic arena is the dominant influence. Overall, the EU policy analysis
process in Ireland is driven, first and foremost, by domestic practices, pressures
and circumstances. In the realm of economic, employment and social policies
based on the OMC method, the EU plays a more muted supporting role in Irish
policy analysis.
Discussion
From a policy analysis perspective, a number of defining observations can be
made in relation to the impact of the EU and Europeanisation, and the manner
in which policy is formulated, adapted and implemented in the Irish setting.
There is a clear distinction evident between the EU’s impact on policy content
versus policy approach. It is in relation to the latter where the EU’s influence is
experienced most emphatically. In 2010, NESC noted: ‘In many areas where
the EU has explicit competence, policy making has become less centralised,
hierarchical and uniform; in others where member states have primacy, policy
making and implementation increasingly take place in an EU framework’ (p 3).
Adshead (2014, p 426) offers a more detailed analysis of how the Europeanisation
of processes and procedures has been experienced at the national level. She
specifically notes: ‘the move to multi-annual, strategic planning and programmatic
government combined with new mechanisms for managing the economy and
the advent of ‘government by partnership’ indicate substantive changes in the
processes and procedures of governance’. These developments are experienced
and encountered in a number of ways.
Policy learning
Policy learning is a key outcome of Ireland’s experience of the EU policy process.
Forty plus years of EU membership and ongoing daily interactions between
Ireland and the Brussels political, administrative and policy machinery has
produced some important learning moments for Irish policy makers. This form
of policy analysis is evident for all EU policies, regardless of their hard or soft law
character. For example, Connaughton (2019) observes that processes of learning
and adaptation have been features of environmental governance in Ireland while
131
Paraskevopoulos and Leonardi (2004) note the increasing use of independent

experts for policy analysis and assessment of EU regional policy in Ireland.
Financial incentives
The Irish policy process is not blind to financial incentives. EU financial support
has clearly been a factor in terms of prompting particular policy responses, and
this is most emphatically evident for redistributive policies such as regional and
cohesion policy. In these instances, the policy analysis process can be construed as
shallow, focused on leveraging material gain without being sufficiently attendant to
the detail of policy fit. Regional policy is a case in point here. During the 2000s,
a significant impetus for the resurgence in interest on spatial and sub-national
regional issues and the reshaping of regional policy in Ireland was motivated
primarily by potential financial gain from an increased EU structural fund budget.
MacFeely (2016) is critical of how regional policy analysis has been conducted in
Ireland, noting that the link between theory and policy development is difficult
to discern, specific and detailed definitions are lacking, modelling and empirical
testing has been sketchy, and the availability of data has been limited (although it
has recently improved) (see Chapter Five, this volume). He determines that: ‘Irish
regional policy has been driven primarily by economic and financial considerations
rather than by other social, political or democratic concerns’ (2016, p 392).
Partnership
Although the tone and content of policy analysis may be only marginally or
minimally affected by the EU, evidence suggests that new approaches to policy
that embrace partnership and greater inclusivity have emerged as features of
Ireland’s engagement with the EU – and this is true for both local and community
development projects, and at the national level (see Chapter Twelve, this volume).
Important new horizontal and vertical EU policy practices are in evidence for a
number of policy areas. Partnership is a prominent EU policy instrument, and
operates on the principle that decisions are made on the basis of partnerships
between state and non-state actors across multiple levels of governance. Generally
regarded as a technical device for improving decision making and policy
effectiveness, the partnership principle has had valuable political side-effects (see
Bache, 2010). This is especially evident in the regional/cohesion policy arena,
but partnership has also been evident for aspects of social policy development in
Ireland (Murphy, 2014; Quinn, 2014), and it has been emphatically employed in
Northern Ireland in the context of rolling out successive EU Peace Programmes.
Consultation
Processes of consultation and evaluation have also increasingly become an
accepted and institutionalised component of the policy analysis process across a
132
variety of EU policy areas. The conduct of a consultation process is invariably a

formal EU legal requirement, although the practice was pioneered in Ireland prior
to it being formalised by the EU. In terms of regional policy, Paraskevopoulos
and Leonardi (2004) point to the significant presence of NGOs, especially at the
regional and local levels. The EU Water Framework Directive also produced good
practice as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) developed and resourced
the implementation of effective local consultation processes. The quality of
consultation processes, however, varies according to sector in Ireland. In a study
of the marine renewable energy (MRE) sector, Reilly and colleagues (2016, p 39)
found that: ‘the consultation process for MRE projects is currently not effective
at addressing and resolving concerns that fishermen may have. This remains a
barrier to effective consultation.’ The use of consultative processes has also been
judged insufficient in terms of the legitimacy challenges to the implementation
of the EU Habitats Directive on raised bog peatlands in designated Special Areas
of Conservation in Ireland (a highly contested and controversial EU directive for
Irish turf cutters) (see O’Riordan et al, 2016), and insufficient consultation was
also a criticism of the EU Nitrates Directive implementation process in Ireland
(see Flynn, 2009).
Benchmarking and targets

Benchmarking and targets have formed the context within which some specific
policies are developed. The NESC (2010, p 2) notes that:
Increasingly, the EU asks that member states benchmark their progress

against common objectives, share their learning with each other and
reconfigure their practice in light of the insights gained from this
process. This need for organisational review and reform is a vital
element of Ireland’s ‘new narrative’ of engagement with the EU and
needs to be widely understood.
In the environmental sphere, Connaughton (2014) notes that EU influence was

important in the establishment of a national independent environmental agency
with technical expertise. The creation of the EPA in 1993 marked a significant
departure for an Irish public administration with little experience or tradition of
agencies. In contrast, Flynn (2009) refers to Irish administrative ‘mismanagement’
and ‘politicking’ as impeding the environmental agenda in Ireland. He notes that:
‘There has unquestionably been a dissemination of best practice on environmental
policies within both the RoI [Republic of Ireland], and also NI [Northern
Ireland]. Yet that process appears to be quite superficial and weak’ (2009, p 53).
Ireland’s National Employment Action Plan (Department of Enterprise, Trade
and Employment, 2003) notes a number of key measures introduced right after
the launch of the EES. These include the Employment Equality Act of 1998
barring discrimination on the grounds of gender and family status, the Parental
133
Leave Act of 1998, and taxation reforms to eliminate disincentives for spouses
to enter the labour market (Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment,
2003). All of these represented significant advances in a new legislative direction,
and pointed to a process of policy analysis that was increasingly expansive and
innovative in its engagement with the possibilities offered by the wider EU
policy domain. However, not all EU-sponsored governance initiatives have been
supported. Gender mainstreaming is supported through EU level budgets, but
this practice is not fully mirrored at the Irish domestic level, and to some degree
has also waned at EU level (Murphy, 2014).
Conclusion
Across a panoply of public policy areas, policy analysis processes in Ireland have
been influenced – to differing degrees – by Europeanisation processes. Evidence
of ‘differential Europeanisation’, ‘partial Europeanisation’ and ‘resistance to
Europeanisation’ are features of the broader Ireland–EU policy landscape. In
the Irish case, domestic factors are effective and often decisive in mediating
and nuancing the impact of the EU on different policies whether Community
method or OMC (Murphy and O’Brennan, 2019). On balance, a process of
‘differential Europeanisation’ has come to characterise the Irish policy landscape
within an overall context of EU governance.
The EU has clearly broadened the scope and potential for innovative, creative
and modernised approaches to policy analysis. In Ireland, however, the process of
policy analysis as it applies to EU policy competences is differentiated according to
policy area and policy type, that is, Community method or OMC. New practices
and approaches, including partnership, consultation, and benchmarking, have
been largely institutionalised, but tend to be rolled out and received differently
depending on the policy area in question. Financial incentives have also been
strategically important in terms of influencing select policies, although this hints
at a shallow and superficial approach to policy analysis.
In the long term (and particularly after Brexit), as the EU shifts towards new
(and contested) policy priorities and modes of governance, resistance to the forces
of Europeanisation in Ireland may become pronounced. The policy analysis
process may find itself in an increasingly challenging space where the need to
balance opposing national interests and legal EU commitments will require a
wide arsenal of policy analysis tools if the policy process is to enjoy support and
legitimacy. This suggests that future EU policy analysis may move towards a more
proactive and creative period as the demands of EU membership change and alter.
Note
1 These include: changes in external boundaries; developing institutions at the European
level; exporting forms of political organisation; a political unification project; and the central
penetration of national systems of governance.
134
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138
Part Three
Think tanks, interest groups,
political parties and gender-
based policy analysis
139
TEN
The social partners and the NESC:

from tripartite dialogue via common
knowledge events to network knowledge
Rory O’Donnell
Introduction
This chapter discusses policy analysis within institutions created by the state
to involve the social partners in the policy process, particularly the National
Economic and Social Council (NESC). From the mid-1980s, a method of policy
analysis was developed in response to the pressures of interest group dialogue
and the economic, social and environmental problems under discussion. Over
time, international thinking and practice in post-positivist social science and
policy analysis provided a language to describe NESC practice and, in some
ways, inform the approach. This is noted as each phase of the approach to policy
analysis is described.
The section following this introduction opens with a sketch of the changing
institutional landscape in which policy analysis involving the social partners took
place. It then notes the NESC’s early work and highlights its view that technical
analysis could not be expected to resolve the differences within it, which reflect
divergent beliefs, ideologies and interests. The chapter then describes a significant
change in the role, method and perspective after 1986. This involved policy
analysis based on framing and reframing to create a series of ‘common knowledge
events’. A further iteration is then outlined – the move to policy analysis in support
of multi-actor, multi-level engagement in the mid-1990s. Faced with complex
supply-side challenges – as well as puzzles and doubts about the possibility, nature
and location of cooperation between organisations with divergent values and
interests – the NESC found in pragmatist thinking an account of how the ‘inner
workings of cooperation’ and analysis can support joint action. The penultimate
section describes the move towards co-production, network knowledge and
the NESC’s adoption of the environmental sustainability agenda in the years
from 2008 to the present. In thinking about its position, role and method, the
NESC secretariat recognised its role as a ‘boundary organisation’, managing the
relationship between policy analysis and diverse actors. The final section reflects
on the overall evolution of policy analysis, identifying elements of continuity and
change. There were significant similarities between the changing use of policy
analysis in interest group dialogue in Ireland and in other countries, especially
141
the Netherlands, despite differences in the wider systems of policy analysis and
interest group mediation.1 The changes in method of policy analysis were largely
cumulative; the earliest approach – engaging the social partners in discussion of
mainstream social scientific analysis and evidence – was never abandoned. New
approaches – reframing, interpretive policy analysis, co-production and network
knowledge – were added.
The institutional context of policy analysis involving the social

partners
The features of Ireland’s system have been outlined in Chapter One of this volume.
Ireland inherited the British voluntarist and adversarial system of industrial
relations, in which the social partner organisations traditionally undertook
relatively little policy analysis themselves. As Ireland moved from protectionism
in the 1960s (see Chapter Two, this volume), representatives of trade unions
and employers were appointed to many public bodies. In 1963, government
established the National Industrial Economic Council, which became the NESC
in 1973. At that time, it contained representatives of the employers’ associations,
trade unions, farm organisations, government departments and independent
experts (for details, see NESC, 1977, p ii).
With high unemployment in the 1990s, there was pressure to include social
non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in policy analysis and dialogue. Rather
than widen the NESC, in 1993 the government established a new body, the
National Economic and Social Forum (NESF), to focus on issues of long-term
unemployment and social exclusion (see Chapter Twelve, this volume). In
1996–97 the Community and Voluntary Pillar (CVP) was added to the NESC.
Government also created the National Centre for Partnership and Performance
(NCPP), to monitor and promote partnership at enterprise and organisational
level. In 2004, the three bodies – NESC, NESF and NCPP – were placed within
the new National Economic and Social Development Office (NESDO).
In 2011, in the fiscal crisis arising from the Great Recession, both the NESF
and the NCPP were closed and their policy analysts transferred to the NESC
secretariat. The Sustainable Development Council (Comhar) was also closed and
in 2011 an Environmental Pillar was included in the NESC, which was instructed
to add sustainable development to its long-standing economic and social remit.
This chapter focuses mainly on policy analysis in the NESC.
Early thinking on the relationship between policy analysis and

interest group dialogue in an increasingly open economy
On its establishment in 1973, the NESC’s task was ‘to provide a forum for
discussion of the principles relating to the efficient development of the national
economy and the achievement of social justice, and to advise the Government …
on their application’ (NESC, 1977, p 29). In its early years, it was one of the
142
The social partners and the NESC
few bodies undertaking strategic, long-term, policy-oriented social scientific

analysis, as evidenced in its work on demographic change. It tried to achieve
a balance between reports dealing with the short-term issues and those aimed
at creating a framework for long-term economic and social development. A
recurring theme was the challenge of achieving low inflation and a functional
system of wage bargaining. In reviewing its work in 1977, it noted that its role
‘places upon it the obligation to strive towards agreement on any advice which
it gives to the Government’ (NESC, 1977, p 22). But it considered that ‘if
consensus is treated as a dominant requirement, the unanimous recommendation
to which representatives of all major interests can all subscribe may at times be
so general and vague as to give Government no clear guide to action’ (NESC,
1977, p 22). It argued that ‘it would be too simplistic to expect’ that differences in
beliefs, ideologies and interests can ‘be resolved by the use of technical expertise
of an economic and quantitative kind’ (NESC, 1977, pp 22–3). Moreover, it
said, it is not clear that such differences ‘can be resolved and consensus reached
by discussion in representative bodies such as the Council’. It noted that, in
the last resort, such differences may be resolved only by a political process, ‘a
responsibility which in a democracy must properly be borne by the Government
alone’ (NESC, 1977, p 23; see also Chapter Fourteen, this volume).
Policy analysis in the service of shared understanding among the

social partners: framing and reframing
The role and prominence of the NESC was reshaped by the long crisis of the
1980s. Its 1986 report, A Strategy for Development, set out the need for both fiscal
correction and enhanced action to promote economic development (NESC,
1986). This provided a basis on which government negotiated the first social
partnership programme, which ran from 1987 to 1990. The pact facilitated
fiscal correction, delivered the kind of wage discipline that had eluded the
actors in earlier decades, and played a significant role in Ireland’s recovery. The
negotiation of each of the six subsequent partnership programmes, from 1987
to 2008, was preceded by a NESC report – widely referred to as the ‘NESC
Strategy’ – which set out a shared analysis of economic and social challenges
and the priorities for negotiation of a new programme (O’Donnell et al, 2011;
O’Donnell, 2014).
Culpepper (2008, pp 13–18) has argued persuasively that the NESC’s 1986
report constituted a ‘common knowledge event’, which changed the strategic
interaction between the trade unions and employers. However, he says relatively
little about how the ‘common knowledge event’ came about – other than that
‘winning ideas are selected through a process of winnowing’, and a shared view
of the economy ‘was hammered out in negotiations in NESC’ (Culpepper, 2008,
pp 12–14). I argue here that this emerged from a significant evolution in NESC’s
approach to policy analysis and in its understanding of the relationship between
policy analysis and interest group dialogue.
143
The method of policy analysis developed in the NESC in the late 1980s
and through the 1990s had a number of elements. At its heart lay the duty of
the secretariat to prepare papers for the monthly meetings of the Council and,
based on that dialogue, to craft reports that the Council could adopt and send
to government. The analysis had to encompass a range of social science fields
– small open economy macroeconomics, fiscal policy, industrial development,
trade, European integration, social policy and wage bargaining. Later it became
necessary to include other fields, such as housing, political economy, institutional
analysis and, more recently, environmental sustainability. It was necessary to
embrace an eclectic range of perspectives. Put simply, it was not possible to sell
a straight neoclassical economic analysis to the unions; a post-Keynesian social
democratic account to the employers; nor the virtues of unfettered free trade to
the farm organisations. The analysis must facilitate some fusion of the horizons
of employers, unions and others, who have both conflicting and convergent
interests and understandings. This calls for analysts who combine technical
proficiency with a degree of creativity. As well as conventional research methods,
this involved extensive use of social science’s most powerful tools – the white
board, the Venn diagram and the two-by-two table – as concepts and evidence are
intensively parsed. Within the analytical team, we used the term ‘dark forest’ to
describe that point in a project where the complex evidence and the contending
understandings of the various actors and interests had been internalised, but there
was, as yet, no sign of a path out. Indeed, past success in breaking out of the
thicket offered little reassurance that it could be done once again. We often noted
that NESC spells the first four letters of ‘nescience’ – not knowing.
An important element of the analysis was narrative. Each of the NESC Strategy
reports contained a narrative and agreed analysis of recent, and sometimes long-
term, Irish and European Union (EU) development.
The articulation and consolidation of this method of policy analysis was
informed by thinking on post-positivist social science and policy analysis. Having
worked in the NESC from 1987 to 1990, I was puzzled by the degree to which
the role of policy analyst differed from the linear view of the expert–policy
relationship, based on technical rationality, that I had learned in my formation as
an economist. This prompted me to search in the philosophy of social science,
and wider philosophical developments, for an articulation of, and foundation for,
the kind policy analysis we were doing in NESC. This revealed that from diverse
directions – the linguistic turn in analytical philosophy, Continental hermeneutics
and critical theory – there was philosophical warrant for policy analysis that was
both theoretically serious and treated the understandings of the social partners
and other actors as a key part of economic and social reality (Bernstein, 1976).
At its heart lies the interpretive nature of the social sciences and what Giddens
called the ‘double hermeneutic’ (Gregory, 1984), to which should be added
the limits of prediction and falsification, the importance of inter-theoretical
debate and dialogue, rejection of the fact–value distinction, dissolution of the
strong distinction between theory and practice and rejection of the means–ends
144
duality – while nevertheless resisting relativism and strong incommensurability

(Outhwaite, 1987). In a 1992 article, I outlined the case for policy analysis that
is methodologically pluralist and pragmatic, engages with practical problems
and actors, takes economic and social theory seriously and brings actors into
encounter with economic and social argumentation and conceptualisation, not
just the results of research. ‘It may be that the provision of interpretation and
argument, which provides groups in the society with means of conceptualising
their position, and thereby facilitates debate and formulation of policy, is about
as much as economics can hope to achieve’ (O’Donnell, 1992, p 85).
Schön and Rein’s (1995) insights on frames and reframing provided a language
to describe our practice. Many policy controversies cannot be resolved by appeal
to facts or expert opinion, and reflect conflicts between actors’ frames – underlying
structures of belief, perception and appreciation. Building on the thinking of
Dewey, Forester, Lindblom and Hirschman, they described and advocated a
method of ‘frame-critical policy analysis’ and ‘frame-reflective policy practice’,
which captured exactly the NESC method (Rein and Schön, 1996, p 88).
Policy analysis of this type ‘is directed not only to abstract understanding of
the controversy, but to facilitate frame-reflective dialogue among frame sponsors
in the discourse so as to increase the likelihood of a reframing that achieves
pragmatic resolution’ (Rein and Schön, 1996, p 101). The analyst’s description
of the frames need to be recognisable by and acceptable to the sponsors of
the frames. The analyst must be willing and able ‘to engage in a process of
deliberation that requires a high degree of self-reflection’ (Rein and Schön, 1996,
p 100). The theme of reflexivity and self-reflection recurs. Indeed, as noted later,
our experience in NESC suggests that as well as self-reflective individuals, it is
necessary to create a self-reflective analytical team. Reframing can take several
forms, ranging from ‘frame extension’, ‘frame blending’ and ‘frame synthesis’, to
creation of a genuinely new framing of a problem. A number of factors enhance
the chances of achieving a pragmatic resolution. One is discussion in a forum
such as the NESC, with conventions of engagement and dialogue. Another is
a focus on ‘situated policy controversies’, which lend themselves to pragmatic
resolution, in contrast to generic controversies, abstracted from particular policy
situations, which tend to remain intransigent.
Culpepper (2008, p 15) is right to say that the 1986 report reflected a new
agreement on Ireland as a small open economy and the perspective of ‘small
states in world markets’. But this tends to suggest that these ‘theories’, and their
application, were available whole. This glosses over the degree and nature of
reframing involved in crafting consensus on these, and in working out how these
concepts might be applied in Ireland’s distinctive circumstances.
Indeed, this brings us to another element of the analysis, which has wider
social scientific implications. There was a close connection between the need to
reframe and recognising that Ireland was a hybrid with respect to several dominant
social scientific theories or classifications, such ‘worlds of welfare’, industrialism,
macroeconomic and wage bargaining regimes, and ‘varieties of capitalism’. Later,
145
we discovered that the two – reframing and hybridity – enhanced the possibility
of Ireland learning from other countries (O’Donnell, 2010, 2012a).
The experience from 1977 to the mid-1990s meant that the participants
in NESC’s analysis and deliberations felt the need to go beyond the earlier,
sanguine, view concerning ‘differences in beliefs, ideologies and interests’. They
no longer trusted that such differences would be adequately resolved by the
political process. This modified view on the relationship between policy analysis
and interest group dialogue, with greater emphasis on the search for shared
understanding, was both a methodological and empirical proposition. NESC’s
analysis of Ireland’s experience in the European Community (EC) (NESC,
1989) and its 1996 analysis of the development of the Irish economy and society
from 1960 to 1996 (NESC, 1996), identified a link between the cognitive and
performative dimensions: limited success in the earlier decades reflected the fact
that governments, employers and unions were acting on the basis of divergent
understandings of key economic mechanisms. Indeed, the need for a ‘consistent
policy approach’ – combining macroeconomic, distributional and structural
policy – became a central theme of NESC analysis from 1990 onwards (NESC,
1990, p 415; NESC, 2013).
The method of policy analysis using framing and reframing is well illustrated
by NESC’s (2005a) report The Developmental Welfare State (see Box 10.1). Other
examples include NESC reports on industrial policy (1982), Ireland’s experience
in the EC and EU (1989, 1997), rural development (1995), housing (2004,
2014a, b, 2015a, b, 2018), the ‘five-part crisis’ (2009), the euro (2010) and key
environmental challenges (see Box 10.2).
Box 10.1:The developmental welfare state
In the mid-2000s, there was agreement that Ireland’s strengthened economy required to
be balanced by more progress in social policy. While discussion initially focused on the
merits of rival welfare models – Scandinavian universalism, Continental social insurance
and residual liberalism, including the case for a ‘rights-based’ approach – this offered
little prospect of convergence or effective advice to government. Out of intense analysis
and reframing came an alternative conceptual framework and reform programme. Each
welfare system consists of three spheres of activity: income supports, services and
innovative measures to address new needs. The Developmental Welfare State is a way of
reforming each of these elements, and linking them more closely.The title of the report
was chosen, in part, to relate to the fact that, on the economic side, Ireland could be
seen as a Networked Developmental State (Ó Riain, 2004).
The report also reframed the dominant understanding of the relationship between
economic performance and social protection. Good economic performance and improved
social protection are not intrinsically opposed, but neither do they inevitably occur
together. A central argument was that a radical development of capacitating services is
146
the single most important route to improving social protection in Ireland. But this faces
formidable challenges in organisation, skill development and quality enhancement in social
services. The report was accompanied by an NESC reframing of the issue of economic
and social rights (2003, pp 355–71). The Developmental Welfare State created what is still
a widely accepted framework for consideration of social policy enhancement that is
supportive of, rather than a drain on, participation and prosperity.
Policy analysis in support of multi-actor, multi-level engagement:

pragmatism
The method of policy analysis evolved further in the second half of the 1990s
and through the first decade of the new century. Up to that point, a key focus of
NESC policy analysis was on national-level, macro-distributional challenges and
their relationship with Ireland’s development project. Consequently, the focus was
largely on high-level economic and social issues and the search for alignment of
the peak-level social partner organisations. Over time, and well before the 2008
global financial crisis and the ending of social partnership, there was a significant
adjustment in NESC’s focus and thinking.
The social partners and government pondered the challenge of maintaining
a consistent policy approach in a period of strong economic growth rather
than crisis (NESC, 1996, p 21). The substantive policy challenges and locus
of cooperation were changing. NESC argued that, within a consistent policy
framework, most of the policies affecting prosperity and inclusion are supply-side
policies; such policies must produce flexibility; and they ‘depend on the high level
social cohesion and co-operation that the state can both call upon and develop’
(NESC, 1996, p 64). Indeed, following a recommendation from the NESC in
1990, government had established a set of local partnership organisations tasked
with addressing long-term unemployment and social exclusion (NESC, 1990,
pp 74–5). This, alongside EU-funded programmes, generated intense interest in
complex, fine-grained, local problems.
There was a strong sense that the increasing intensity and breadth of joint
analysis, dialogue and cooperation was not just a continuation of the conventions
and crisis response created in 1986–87, but was generating new conventions and
new institutional relationships – a development that some welcomed, some feared
and all were puzzled by. Some within the unions were anxious about the system
of high-level bargaining in which they were increasingly embedded. In addition,
there was anxiety about the imminent widening to include a new CVP in NESC
and social partnership (NESC, 1996 pp 265–7). Might it create a destructive tug-
of-war on distributive issues, or an abstract debate on normative ones? Conversely,
some in the social NGOs feared that participation would require them to abandon
their critique of the economic and social system (Larragy, 2016).
These developments prompted thought about what form of policy analysis and
social partner cooperation was required. In 1995, the government invited the
147
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to review

Ireland’s local development approach. By locating the new local partnerships in
the context of wider economic development and changes in public governance,
the OECD report challenged all the actors, especially the public system (OECD,
1996). In addition, in the course of its work, the OECD team asked the NESC
secretariat to investigate the prevalence of new organisational disciplines in
Irish business. That task, making NESC analysts familiar with important new
pragmatist insights on the conditions and processes of economic and cooperation
(Sabel, 1994), had a profound effect on the discussion of these challenges and
on subsequent policy analysis in NESC and its sister organisations. Indeed, the
approach to policy analysis was also influenced by NESC’s involvement in several
international networks. These facilitated frequent dialogue with two influential
Dutch institutions – the Social and Economic Council (Sociaal-Economische Raad),
where the social partners meet and advise government, and the Scientific Council
for Government Policy (Wetenschappelijke Raad voor het Regeringsbeleid), which
undertakes exploratory and conceptual studies of societal challenges.
In 1996–97, the NESF hosted a series of discussions of how to make the
widened system of stakeholder engagement effective. The agreed report contained
an exploration of how policy analysis, deliberation and representation can be
combined in the changing context (NESF, 1997). Building on the experience
in the NESC and the NESF, and drawing on pragmatist thinking, it argued that
although the process of interest group dialogue and social partnership involves
bargaining and an element of solidarity, it extends beyond each. It involves the
players in a process of deliberation, interaction and problem solving ‘that has
the potential to reshape their understanding, identity and preferences’ (NESF,
1997, p 33). It suggested that ‘In the right institutional context, skilled actors
engage with one another in ways which (temporarily and provisionally) resolve
conflicts, which are undecidable in more general debate’ (NESF, 1997, p 34).
A key task is discovery of the institutional arrangements that can assist this,
rather than extended prior discussion of economic and social systems, democracy,
solidarity and community (NESF, 1997, p 34).2 These insights were combined
with recognition of a number of changes in the economy, society and public
governance (NESF, 1997; NESC, 1996, 1997, 1999, 2002, 2005a, 2005b) to
further develop the approach to policy analysis.
‘New social risks’ were emerging alongside old ones. Diverse new civil society
groups were forming, often based on attempts to understand and address new,
or previously unrecognised, problems and needs. Consequently, ‘the nature and
role of social partners was changing, in ways which accentuate mobilisation,
information and action’ (NESF, 1997, p 51). The role of government was also
changing, in ways that weakened traditional policy making and administration.
‘The relationship between policy-making, implementation and monitoring is
changing, in ways which place monitoring of a new sort at the centre of policy
development, and require a new combination of all three’ (NESF, 1997, p 33; see
also Dorf and Sabel, 1998). Note was made of the extension of the regulatory
148
state, with a plethora of public agencies networked in diverse ways (see Chapter
Four, this volume).
These trends prompted thought about the kind of evidence and policy analysis
that is of value to interest group dialogue and policy. It was noted that the relation
between analysis and policy was changing. The rationalist sequence – involving
analysis–recommendation–policy decision–implementation – no longer described
the policy process. Some of the most important policy analysis arises out of
problems of implementation. Much policy thinking and analysis was closer to
policy making, which is, in turn, closer to policy implementation (see Chapter
Five, this volume).
These trends suggested that the work must include not only analytical desk-
based studies of strategic issues, but also more detailed description and analysis of
existing institutions and programmes and greater engagement with those making
policy and seeking to address problems in implementation. Indeed, it was noted
that when policy analysis in bodies such as the NESC have an impact, it is often
through providing a new interpretation of existing and emergent policies and
institutions in a way that allows policy actors to identify new possibilities. In the
secretariat’s internal discussion in 2010, the term ‘interpretive policy analysis’ was
coined to describe this work.
These changes had profound implications, especially for a body such as the
NESC. On the side of stakeholder engagement, they implied greater contact
with organisations working at the front line, and not just the leaders of the peak-
level associations. On the side of policy analysis and advice, they implied a need
for greater focus on the public system itself (NESC, 2005a). Indeed, we noted
that this approach – working with the most knowledgeable actors in a problem-
solving way – has long characterised the most effective parts of the Irish public
system, such as the Industrial Development Authority, and has developed strongly
in other areas, such as agriculture and food (O’Donnell, 2014).
Co-production, network knowledge and the environmental

sustainability agenda
The method and content of NESC’s policy analysis continued to develop in
the years after the Great Recession. The onset of the crisis prompted intense
analysis and discussion within the NESC and the secretariat, yielding the 2009
report Ireland’s Five-Part Crisis – itself a reframing since the focus of some
groups on the banking and fiscal crises glossed over the economic crisis of lost
competitiveness. While efforts were made to find a partnership way through
the crisis, the scale of the adjustment meant that this did not succeed. Social
partnership came to an end and, with the arrival of the Troika, government
engagement with organised civil society was greatly curtailed (see Chapter
Twelve, this volume)3. Although the NESC predated social partnership, it could
not, post-social partnership, simply revert to the kind of policy analysis and role
it played up to the mid‑1980s.
149
Profound changes in society, the economy and organisation mean that

knowledge relevant to policy is more distributed and, in many spheres, effective
policy analysis needs to include engagement with organisations working at ground
level. Indeed, change in that direction has been evident in the evolution of NESC’s
work since the mid-1990s, even when it was still working within the context
of the high-level dialogue and the formulation of comprehensive agreements.
In recent years, the NESC has returned to a policy issue it examined in
great detail back in 2004 – housing. In six reports between 2014 and 2019, it
addressed social housing (NESC, 2014a), the balance between home ownership
and rental (NESC, 2014b), reform of the rental sector (NESC, 2015a), the
land system and active land management (NESC, 2015b, 2018) and transport-
oriented development (NESC, 2019a). These reports would seem to have
had some, limited, influence on government policy, but they certainly shaped
the policy discourse: the return to social housing provision, rent stabilisation
policy, putting permanent affordable or ‘cost rental’ on the agenda, and the
establishment of the Land Development Agency. This work included typical
NESC comparative and empirical analysis, bringing a housing system perspective
to bear, and reframing of key policy debates – for example, breaking the dualist
framing of the choice between secure occupancy and measures to increase supply
(NESC, 2015a). But, much of the information in the six housing reports derived
from secretariat networking and triangulation with knowledgeable actors in
the housing, land and financial systems. At times, the secretariat was a resource
used by the Department of Housing, Community and Local Government.
The housing work underlines the cumulative and plural nature of the NESC
approach to policy analysis.
An important change was the addition of the Environmental Pillar in 2011,
and the instruction that NESC include environmental sustainability in its work.
It was increasingly accepted that economic, social and environmental issues are
deeply entwined, and cannot be addressed effectively in isolation. As with the
widening to include the Community and Voluntary Pillar in the mid-1990s, it
was recognised that this was a profound change, posing challenges for both the
policy analysts and NESC members. The approach to policy analysis in this phase
is illustrated here, in Box 10.2, by recent work on climate change (see also the
report on wind energy, NESC, 2014c).
Box 10.2: Climate change policy: getting the process right
In 2011, government asked the secretariat to prepare a report on climate change. The
secretariat initially shared the assumptions that underpinned the then-dominant, top-down
framing of the climate change policy challenge. But its analysis forced it to reframe the
policy challenge (O’Donnell, 2012b). In particular, it was deemed necessary to balance
the dominant policy emphasis on ‘how much’ emissions reduction to target, with more
focus on ‘how to’ decarbonise the economy and society.This would require engagement
150
of actors, through a governance system that animates, learns from and pushes networks
of firms, public organisations and communities to ever-greater decarbonisation (NESC
Secretariat, 2012).
In 2019, the NESC published Climate Change: Getting the Process Right. It highlighted the
profound uncertainties about how to tackle climate change – concerning technologies
and solutions, their costs, and willingness to bear these costs – and the implications
for the core aspects of climate change policy, including policy analysis and its use in the
policy process (NESC, 2019b, p 2). The report endorsed the idea of a Climate Action
Implementation Board in the Department of the Taoiseach, based on the Action Plan
for Jobs (APJ), but it suggested widening the APJ-type approach. As well as checking
the implementation of a list of known and defined actions, it would need to create a
process that empowers front-line agencies and actors to explore, find, trial and cost
new solutions tailored to specific contexts. This would enhance the existing analytical
and policy approach, based on prior modelling of putative mitigation measures, in order
to cost, rank and choose least-cost policy actions (NESC, 2019b, p 2).
In dialogue with government, in 2016 NESC restated its function and redefined its
working methods. On paper, the core characteristics remain remarkably similar to
those in place for decades – a focus on problems that are recognised by government
as challenging, and on which civil society organisations can be a resource; analysis
and ideas that are rigorous, but also reframe problems in ways that allow the
actors to see new possibilities; and analysis that explores the economic and social
dimensions of issues as well as the environmental and sustainable development
perspectives. A new element is mention of work that addresses the public system
and institutional challenges facing policy, implementation, monitoring and
learning. Yet, the change in context – economic, social, environmental, political,
administrative, organisational and representational – means that the practice of
policy analysis, NESC deliberation and input to policy has changed a lot since the
1970s, or even the 1990s. NESC now explicitly embraces a diversity of working
methods and outputs. These include analysis of the type outlined here, but also
hosting open policy debates and workshops involving networks or practitioners,
and establishing project working groups involving NESC members and others;
identifying and mapping emergent innovations and experiments in the public
system, the economy and society that give insight into new ways of addressing
challenges, and exploring ways in which these can be generalised; and convening
relevant actors to explore institutional challenges related to implementation,
monitoring and learning arising from NESC work.
As a result, a significant part of NESC’s policy analysis is now based on a
form of ‘network knowledge’, and speaks to both the NESC as a collective
and a range of government and non-government actors. An in-house term
used for this pragmatic method of policy analysis was ‘zig-zag’: between theory
and evidence; between analysis and interest group dialogue; between high-
151
level policy context and the front line; between dialogue within the NESC and
networking with external civil society actors; between all of these and officials
in relevant government departments. This involves the kind of ‘co-production’
and ‘boundary work’ that is increasingly identified in international discussion of
the relationship between knowledge and policy (Owens, 2015).
Conclusion
This chapter shows that there have been some enduring characteristics of the
policy analysis involving the social partners in NESC and related institutions.
The engagement of the social partners was never merely representational and never
just consultative, always aiming to influence government policy and support its
animation of a network of civil society organisations working in a problem-
solving way. Yet, in response to a changing context, there has been significant
evolution of the method of policy analysis and its relationship to both interest
group dialogue and government policy. One continuity has been continual self-
reflection by the policy analysts. In part, this reflexivity is necessary because
of the need to provide policy analysis that can generate a fusion of horizons
among actors with diverse understandings and interests, or at least analysis that
can earn their respect. It was also necessary because of the NESC’s fragile and
shifting position with respect to government and the social partners. But it also
reflects the increasing complexity of the policy challenges and reflexivity of the
economic, social and environmental actors and organisations in society.
Indeed, these approaches to policy analysis, and changed understanding of
the relationship between knowledge and policy, are not unique to the NESC or
Ireland. As analysed in other volumes in this series, similar changes in practice and
conception are underway in many democratic states, especially the Netherlands
(van Nispen and Scholten, 2015). Among these is the increasing prevalence of
‘co‑production’ and greater focus on ‘boundary work’ and ‘boundary organisations’
(Bijker et al, 2009). What the NESC secretariat describes as zig‑zag, mentioned
earlier, suggests its awareness that it is, in part, a ‘boundary organisation’. It
has to maintain a flexible but coherent engagement between knowledge (both
co‑produced and deriving from ‘expert’ sources), deliberation within the NESC,
wider interest group dialogue, public agencies and key government departments.
As with all boundary organisations, the ability, standing and credibility of the
secretariat with key actors is critical.
The story suggests the need for Irish policy actors, analysts and higher
education institutions to think further about the relationships between social
scientific knowledge and policy. One reason is to clarify the capabilities involved
in doing policy analysis in a context of co-production and complex institutional
landscapes. Another reason is the likely change in the state’s relations with civil
society. The global financial crisis prompted a dramatic centralisation of Irish
public policy, accompanied by enhanced reliance on ‘expert’ knowledge and a
particular version of evidence-based policy. It is inconceivable that a modern
152
small European democracy could be permanently governed in such a centralised

way, and we are now witnessing a gradual thaw, as the state re-engages with civil
society. As this proceeds, we require more analysis and discussion on the diverse
ways knowledge is generated and used.
Notes
1 While every effort is made to be objective, the reader should know that the author worked
in the NESC secretariat at various periods from 1987 to 2019, was Chief Officer of the
National Economic and Social Development Office (NESDO) and worked as a consultant to
the National Economic and Social Forum (NESF) in 1996–97.
2 In his seminal 1994 piece, ‘Learning by monitoring: the institutions of economic development’,
Sabel had drawn attention to the possibility that ‘the inner workings of cooperation might
transform the actors’ understanding of one another in relation to the commonly defined world
in which their interests are rooted’ (Sabel, 1994, p 155). His key observation – that ‘It is the
constant re-elaboration of intent that can produce the fundamental alignment of interests that
the sociological account assumes as the precondition of cooperation and the economic account
excludes even as a consequence’ – seemed relevant to the deepening engagement of economic
and social interests and prompted his invitation to the NESF discussions in 1997 (pp 155–6).
3 In November 2010, the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the
International Monetary Fund, agreed with the Irish government on a three-year financial aid
programme, conditional on budgetary adjustment and reforms. A delegation from the three
institutions, colloquially called the Troika, monitored the implementation of the programme.
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ELEVEN
Thinks tanks and their role

in policy making in Ireland
Chris McInerney
Introduction
Ireland, like most other ‘developed’ countries, draws on a range of sources to
influence the design of public policy. Alongside political and administrative
influences, a variety of civil society, not-for-profit, academic and private sector
actors seek to access, influence, advise, inform and, sometimes, embarrass those
in power. This chapter focuses on one particular group, think tanks, organisations
that seek to contribute to policy analysis through research, policy development
and, in some cases, advocacy. The first part of the chapter reviews the international
experience on think tanks. Here, the question of what constitutes a think tank is
discussed, different types of think tanks are introduced and the complex question
of assessing think tank influence and contribution to policy analysis is considered.
The second part of the chapter turns to Ireland, mapping the Irish think tank
landscape and categorising Irish think tanks by age, type and resource base. It
also considers the issue of influence of think tanks on Irish policymaking and
explores data relevant to a number of key influence indicators.
The broader picture

It is generally agreed that think tanks are not-for-profit organisations that engage
in research on issues of public policy and communicate their research findings,
publicly or otherwise, with a view to influencing and enhancing the capacity of
policymakers to make informed decisions (Hart and Vromen, 2008; Shaw et al,
2015; McGann, 2018). The research undertaken by think tanks is often more
anticipatory, longer term and deeper than may be possible for those preoccupied
with the day-to-day realities of policy design and delivery. Think tanks advocate
for policy options ‘through intellectual argument rather than through behind-
the-scenes lobbying’ or other forms of advocacy from the perspective of the lived
experience of the problem under analysis (Pautz, 2010, p 276).
Think tanks are usually independent of government – legally, financially and/
or intellectually (Stone and Ullrich, 2003). However, as the geographic spread
of think tanks has widened, the relevance of independence as a criteria has
been diluted, with think tanks being linked to political parties, to funders, and
sometimes to government itself, as in the case of the rapid expansion of think
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tanks in China (Stone, 2007; Sundararaman, 2008). Think tanks often enjoy
some degree of longevity, having adequate resources to enable them to employ
sufficient and credible human resources to carry out research and dissemination
functions (Boucher and Hobbs, 2004). They have been described by the United
Nations Development Programme as ‘the bridge between knowledge and power’
(Andjelković, 2003, p 6), though clearly the span and strength of their bridging
capacity depends on their perceived degree of credibility, competence and their
ideological compatibility with key decision makers.
Origins and scope

Think tanks began to appear on the policy landscape in the early part of the
20th century in the United States (US) and the United Kingdom (UK), with
some of the most prominent early examples including organisations such as
the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Brookings Institution,
Chatham House, The Royal Institute of National Affairs and the Council on
Foreign Relations. These bodies were established so that understandings of
international affairs would be informed by more ‘scientific’ thinking, and in the
process would help ‘avoid a repetition of past mistakes and improve prospects for
peace in the future’ (Niblett, 2018, p 3).
After the Second World War, the think tank nomenclature began to enter into
‘academic parlance’, as institutions emerged to focus on policy making around
issues of state security during and after the Cold War (Sundararaman, 2008, p 122).
Some of this era’s think tanks, such as the Rand Corporation, initially focused
on planning for the military in ‘secure and sealed environments’ (Stone, 2007,
p 261). However, by the 1970s, the scope had widened to include organisations
with a broader focus on economic and political issues. By the end of the 1970s,
some of the most prominent Western European think tanks had emerged, often
supported by increasing government expenditure on policy research and analysis
(Stone and Ullrich, 2003). Later, a new breed of ‘new generation’ (Vromen and
Hurley, 2015, p 173) independent think tanks followed. These were usually
smaller, less well funded and more specialised, and sometimes with more distinct
ideological orientations. In particular, the arrival of ‘New Right’ think tanks,
both in Europe and the US, is of note; at least some of these bodies operated to
inform the thinking of more conservative political parties. Finally, it is suggested
that a fourth wave of think tanks has emerged in recent years, those that focus
their concerns on the transnational policy environment, be it regional or global.
Globally, in 2018 it was estimated that over 8,200 think tanks existed, most
of these being in the US. The Global Go To Think Tank Index, produced
by the Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program (www.gotothinktank.com)
and the endnote should be deleted at the Lauder Institute at the University of
Pennsylvania, annually provides an assessment of the numbers of think tanks
throughout the world. This index puts the number of North American think
tanks at 2,058, with 1,872 of these located in the US, the biggest number in
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Thinks tanks and their role in policy making in Ireland
any single country and one that has ‘more than doubled since 1980’ (McGann,
2018, p 14). By contrast, Europe as a whole accounts for 2,219 think tanks, with
the UK and Germany having the largest numbers at 321 and 218 respectively.
Between them, North America and Europe account for 51% of the global total
number of think tanks, leaving a considerable number focusing on Asia, Australia,
Latin America and an increasing number on the African continent (McGann,
2018, p 14). China and India are estimated to have over 500 think tanks each
(McGann, 2018; Niblett, 2018).
Typologies of think tanks

Given this expansion of the known think tank universe, it is useful to place on it
some degree of order. One such typology (Weaver and McGann, 2000) proposes
the existence four types of think tank.
First, academic think tanks are bodies that emphasise the production of
academic research, though not necessarily within academic institutions. A key
distinguishing element between university-based research and that carried out
in think tanks is the clearer focus in the latter on promoting as well as producing
policy relevant analysis. Academic think tanks emphasise the importance of
rigorous, objective research using highly qualified researchers, usually at PhD
level. Funding for this type of think tank is likely to be made up of support for
core costs, often from government, as well as from earned income linked to
specific research activities. Given their more academic nature, outputs from this
type of think tank are more likely to take the form of research reports, books
and academic journals.
A second type of think tank is the ‘contract-based’ model. Think tanks in this
category may also emphasise academic standards of research, but rely almost
entirely on contracts to fund their activities. As such, these think tanks may
be more subject to the influence of funders in charting a research direction.
However, by virtue of being contracted to address a policy-specific issue,
they may be in a stronger position to produce more directly ‘policy-relevant’
conclusions or analysis (Weaver and McGann, 2000, p 8). Their outputs too will
differ from those of the more academic think tanks, with a greater emphasis on
research reports and more immediately accessible publication forms designed to
be of more immediate relevance to policy analysis and public officials.
Third, advocacy think tanks, as the name suggests, are more likely to be
associated with the pursuit of particular objectives, using research to advance
policy making in particular realms, be they ideological, environmental, moral or
otherwise. Advocacy think tanks are distinct from non-governmental organisations
that may have developed research capacity as a companion to related operational
activities. They are also are less likely to recruit from university faculties and, as
a result, may be seen as ‘less credentialed’ (Weaver and McGann, 2000, p 7). In
terms of outputs, advocacy think tanks are likely to place greater emphasis on
shorter, more accessible outputs that may still be relevant to policy analysis and
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may be specifically designed for that purpose, albeit not achieving the same level
of depth as a contract-based model.
Finally, political party think tanks share many of the earlier definitional
components, but they are more definitively linked to individual political parties
and are designed to more directly serve the policy agenda of the party. As such,
they will be less independent and possibly more motivated by short-term issues
in pursuit of electoral gain.
A fifth type of think tank, a government or in-house think tank, is sometimes
considered (Hart and Vromen, 2008). However, while enjoying financial security
and potentially having greater influence, this variety cannot easily claim to be
independent and may be less able to engage with issues that are likely to be
politically sensitive.
The unique role of public policy-oriented think tanks and their specific
contribution to policy analysis is well captured in the following quote from the
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development:
Unlike many watchdog organisations or pressure groups, they base

their recommendations on solid research. Unlike academic institutions,
they produce applied analysis with the aim of improving public policy.
As brokers, think tanks can make complex topics more accessible for
the general public and help stimulate national policy dialogue. As
outsiders to government, they can provide independent monitoring
of public policy, propose policy alternatives and have greater room for
innovative thinking. In sum, think tanks can nurture development by
helping narrow the traditional gap between knowledge and practice.
(OECD, 2008, p 1)
The issue of independence is a recurring theme in the background information

produced by many think tanks, especially those in the Anglo-American and
Western European traditions (Boucher and Hobbs, 2004; Shaw et al, 2015),
presumably to enable think tanks to assert their capacity to produce more objective
and less agenda-tainted research. However, for others, asserting their ideological
foundations and values is an essential part of their identity and contribution to
policy analysis (Vromen and Hurley, 2015).
Considerations of independence, autonomy and objectivity produce an
additional, independence-oriented typology to sit alongside the earlier versions
that were more concerned with describing function and mode of operation.
Thus, think tanks may be:
• autonomous and independent – there is significant independence from any one

interest group or donor and they are largely autonomous in their operation
and funding from government;
• quasi-independent – the think tank is ‘autonomous from government but
controlled by an interest group, donor, or contracting agency that provides
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most of the funding and has significant influence over operations of the
think tank’;
• government-affiliated – the think tank is ‘a part of the formal structure
of government’;
• quasi-governmental – the think tank is ‘funded exclusively by government
grants and contracts but not a part of the formal structure of government’;
• university-affiliated – that is, ‘a policy research centre at a university’;
• politically affiliated – allied with a political party;
• commercially affiliated – that is, a corporate, for-profit, think tank, either
affiliated with a corporation or ‘merely operating on a for-profit-basis’.
(McGann, 2018, p 13)
We return to these categories in the second part of the chapter.
The purpose of a think tank

While the various definitions and typologies suggest some of the roles
played by think tanks, it is helpful to spell out their range of functions in
greater detail, not least to enable the review of Irish think tanks that follows in
the second part of the chapter, but also to ascertain their specific relevance to
policy analysis.
In the first instance, it is generally agreed that the core purpose of a think
tank is to undertake rigorous, scientifically conducted and independent research,
testing new ideas and enabling long-term perspectives to be taken on issues, some
of which may not as yet be on the policy or political agenda. Think tanks are
seen as necessary to enable policy makers to manage the vast array of increasingly
complex information being presented about an equally increasingly complex
range of problems (McGann, 2007). Moreover, think tanks are expected to be
innovative, forward-looking and anticipatory (Stone and Ullrich, 2003), in effect,
providing the capacity to balance the short termism and sometimes populist
agendas of the political system and the administrative infrastructure it directs
(Fraussen and Halpin, 2017). A more far-sighted approach to policy analysis is
therefore a key contribution.
However, the role of think tanks is not just to carry out research; it is also
expected that they play a role in identifying ‘and promoting policy solutions’
(McGann, 2018, p 20). The promotional role requires that think tanks involve
themselves in the dissemination of their ideas, organising or participating in
events designed to stimulate discussion about the policy analysis they provide.
In the past, policy makers may have been the primary target of such analysis.
However, increasingly, the broader public is also a key audience, given its capacity
to exert influence over political decision making. With the array of information
being directed at both policy makers and the public, the need to present data
and ideas in a more easily accessible, less technical manner – using policy briefs,
infographics, blogs, video presentations and other media – becomes more pressing
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(Stone and Ullrich, 2003; McGann, 2018). This may involve hosting seminars,
lectures or conferences, and certainly involves a visible and active social media
presence (Niblett, 2018). It may also require the recruitment of additional skill
sets, staff whose talent lies not only in research and policy analysis but also in
creative communication, who can translate complex information, both for policy
makers and the public (Stone and Ullrich, 2003).
Beyond the promotional role, think tanks may also be facilitators of dialogue,
creating opportunities for discussion on policy issues, working in some cases
with policy makers only, in others, facilitating boundary spanning interactions
involving state, private sector and civil society actors (Weaver and McGann, 2000;
Stone and Ullrich, 2003). Thinks tanks become brokers of ideas, ‘organising
interaction between and discursively connecting suppliers and consumers on
the market for policy ideas’ (Hart and Vromen, 2008, p 137). Finally, in terms
of their purpose, think tanks may act as independent experts capable of advising
the work of parliamentary committees, policy commissions and so on (Fraussen
and Halpin, 2017), thereby involving themselves not just in policy analysis but
also in oversight, accountability and transparency domains.
Understanding and measuring influence

While it is relatively easy to describe the purpose of a think tank, resolving
‘the methodological riddle of measuring influence’ is much more challenging
(Hart and Vromen, 2008, p 138; Vromen and Hurley, 2015), not least given
the extended length of the policy cycle. Some suggest that it may take up to
a decade for policy contributions and resulting ‘ideas to be transformed into a
specific public policy decision’ (Weidenbaum, 2010, p 135) while a European
analysis more optimistically puts the influence window closer to three years
(Stone and Ullrich, 2003). Influence is, of course, linked to the capacity to
promote and communicate policy analysis to a variety of different audiences
– funders, policy makers (who may also be funders) and the general public, to
name just three (McGann, 2018). It is important, however, not to assume that
high public visibility guarantees influence (Hart and Vromen, 2008).
Building profile may not be of equal concern for all think tanks. Governmental
or quasi-governmental think tanks, and those affiliated to political parties, may
already enjoy the access needed to communicate their research findings and policy
suggestions, so self-promotion may not be seen as necessary. However, even this
cannot be guaranteed. Research in the UK on the relationship between think
tanks and the New Labour government concluded that there were ‘expectations
among think tank analysts and academics that the new government would be keen
on a regular intellectual exchange. But these hopes were disappointed. With the
full power of Whitehall behind it, external advice from thinly staffed think tanks
was not required by government’ (Pautz, 2010, p 283). This experience highlights
some of the tensions that may exist between those within the administrative
system and those offering policy analysis from outside, between those with a
162
predominantly operational focus and those perhaps looking at complex issues

from a somewhat more abstracted perspective.
Despite the complexities in understanding actual influence, it is still necessary
to have some way to capture it. In practice, approaches to measuring influence
are often confined to those things that can be more easily enumerated: an
organisation’s overall budget; the number and types of research outputs; specific
requests for publications from ‘key opinion formers’ (Denham and Garnett,
2006, p 164); hits on websites, levels of mainstream and social media interest
in the think tank or in a given output; media appearances, events held and the
nature and number of attendees participating. Some may go further and seek
to identify how their outputs subsequently feature in public policy proposals,
though whether they actually generate specific policy change is yet another
measurement hurdle.
Think tanks in Ireland1

By comparison with other countries, Ireland is a relative newcomer to the world
of think tanks, the earliest being the Economic and Social Research Institute
(ESRI), which was founded in 1960 on the inspiration of T.K. Whitaker and
other senior civil servants, and with the support of the Ford Foundation. As
might be expected, there is a general relationship between population size, gross
domestic product (GDP) and the numbers of think tanks in each country, the
more populous and wealthier countries having larger numbers of think tanks.
However, it is noticeable that Ireland, despite having the same share of European
Union (EU) GDP and close to the same population, has only 14 think tanks
compared with 51 in Denmark. Finland, which has a similar population to
Ireland and a lower proportion of EU GDP, has more than double the number
of think tanks. For both of these countries, the levels of recorded research and
development (R&D) intensity (expenditure on research measured as a percentage
of overall GDP) was considerably higher in 2017, 3.06 in Denmark and 2.76
in Finland, compared to just 1.05 in Ireland (see Table 11.1) (Eurostat, 2019a).
Scale of think tank activity

Fourteen Irish based think tanks with some level of activity in Ireland since 2015
can be identified. However, two are currently inactive, reducing the number of
active think tanks to 12. Table 11.2 describes these organisations in terms of their
age, level of funding, staff numbers and legal status. Of the identified think tanks,
only three existed before 1990 and can be considered as ‘old generation’ think
tanks (Vromen and Hurley, 2015) – the ESRI, the Law Reform Commission
(LRC) and the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working
Conditions (Eurofound). All three were sponsored by the government or the EU
in line with the trend at the time to increase public spending to enhance capacity
for research and analysis, at a more general or specific policy level. The ESRI is
163
164
Table 11.1: Think tanks in the EU relative to share of EU GDP and R&D intensity
R&D intensity R&D intensity
(R&D expenditure as (R&D expenditure as
No. of No of
% of GDP) % of GDP)
think Population % share of think Population % share of
Country tanks (millions) EU GDP, 2017 2007 2017 Country tanks (millions) EU GDP, 2017 2007 2017
United Kingdom 321 64.88 15.2 1.62 1.67 Greece 10.86 46 1.2 0.58 1.13
Germany 218 81.2 21.3 2.45 3.02 Finland 5.47 29 1.5 3.35 2.76
France 203 66.42 14.9 2.02 2.25 Slovakia 5.42 27 0.6 0.45 0.88
Italy 114 60.8 11.2 1.13 1.35 Czech Republic 10.54 27 1.3 1.31 1.79
Sweden 90 9.75 3.1 3.25 3.33 Portugal 10.37 25 1.3 1.12 1.32
Netherlands 83 16.9 4.8 1.67 1.99 Lithuania 2.92 22 0.3 0.8 0.88
Austria 74 8.58 2.4 2.42 3.16 Estonia 1.31 20 0.2 1.07 1.29
Spain 66 46.45 7.6 1.23 1.2 Ireland 4.63 14 1.9 1.23 1.05
Belgium 60 11.26 2.9 1.84 2.58 Latvia 1.99 11 0.2 0.55 0.51
Hungary 46 9.86 0.8 0.96 1.35 Croatia 4.23 11 0.3 0.79 0.86
Bulgaria 44 7.2 0.3 0.43 0.75 Luxembourg 0.562 8 0.4 1.59 1.26
Poland 60 38.01 3 0.56 1.03 Slovenia 2.06 6 0.3 1.42 1.86
Denmark 51 5.66 1.9 2.52 3.06 Cyprus 0.847 6 0.1 0.4 0.56
Romania 54 19.87 1.2 0.51 0.5 Malta 0.429 4 0.1 0.55 0.55
Source: McGann (2018) and Eurostat (2019a, 2019b)

Table 11.2: Think tanks operating in/from Ireland

Name Founded Type Status Funding Staff
ESRI2 1960 Academic Quasi- €11.535 million in 119 FTEs in 2017
governmental 2017
LRC3 1975 Academic Quasi- €1.962 million in 20
governmental 2016
Eurofound4 1975 Academic Quasi- Almost €21 million 98
governmental in 2018
Institute of International and 1991 Academic Autonomous €1.416 million in 28
European Affairs (IIEA)5 2017
Centre for Cross Border Studies 1999 Advocacy Autonomous £457,912 8
(CCBS)6
Institute of Public Health in 1999 Academic Quasi- €2.124 million 22
Ireland (IPHI) (cross-border)7 governmental
Think Tank for Action on Social 2001 Advocacy/ Autonomous €604,788 in 2017 8 in 2019
Change (TASC)8 academic
Iona Institute9 2007 Advocacy/ Autonomous €218,798 in 2017 2 in 2019
academic
Asia Matters10 2011 Advocacy Autonomous Not published Not published
Social Justice Ireland (SJI)11 2009 Advocacy Autonomous €310,289 in 2018 7
Nevin Economic Research 2012 Advocacy/ Quasi- €564,142 7
Institute (NERI)12 academic independent
Local Government Information Unclear Contract Contract Not available 8 core staff across
Unit Group13 (cross‑jurisdiction) Dublin, Edinburgh
and London
Inactive think tanks

Collins Institute14 Political Active up to April 2018
Centre for Irish and European Security Advocacy Founded in 2008, active up to 2015
the country’s largest think tank, with a budget of over €11 million in 2017 and
a staff of over 100 (www.esri.ie). The LRC has been described as ‘the country’s
leading legal think-tank’ (McCárthaigh, 2012), and was established in 1975 to
keep the country’s laws under review and to make recommendations for law
reform. Operating at EU level, but based in Ireland, Eurofound is another well-
resourced think tank that provides ‘information, advice and expertise on working
conditions and sustainable work, industrial relations, labour market change and
quality and life and public services’ (www.eurofound.europa.eu), targeted at EU
institutions, member states and social partners. All three are categorised here as
‘academic’ and ‘quasi-governmental’ think tanks.
Post-1990, again in line with international trends (Stone and Ullrich, 2003),
other mainly autonomous or quasi-independent think tanks began to emerge.
One of the most prominent of these, the IIEA, was established in 1991 and is
ranked at number 41 among Western European think tanks by the Global Go
To Think Tank Index (McGann, 2018). While the IIEA mode of establishment
165
and operation differs from the earlier established bodies, it is still considered an
academic think tank, albeit fully autonomous. Another noticeable addition in
1999 was a further quasi-non-governmental, academic think tank, the IPHI,
set up to promote health and wellbeing through the provision of evidence and
advice on both sides of the border.
After 2000, the number of think tanks in Ireland more than doubled. Several
organisations emerged with a more distinct advocacy bias, including some
with more visible ideological and interest group linkages, though none was as
financially well-endowed as the earlier examples. For example, SJI, which grew
out of the Conference of Major Religious Superiors and later the Conference
of Religious in Ireland, is a high-profile, autonomous think tank, focusing on
issues of social justice, equality and sustainability. The TASC is a left-leaning,
autonomous body that communicates both its organisational form and purpose
in its title. Similarly left-leaning is the NERI, a quasi-independent think tank
supported by trade unions affiliated to the Irish Congress of Trade Unions. The
Iona Institute, the smallest in terms of budget and staff complement, is often
described as a think tank even though it produces limited research outputs.
Finally, it is worth highlighting the existence of just one ‘political’ think tank,
the Collins Institute, which is associated with Fine Gael, but which has not been
active since 2018.
Assessing policy influence

Of course, the key question is, what influence, if any, do these think tanks have
on policy analysis and the design of public policy in Ireland? Most think tanks
do not track their influence on policy. To address this question, and building on
international practice, a number of proxy indicators of influence must be used:
the number and nature of research outputs produced; reference to these in policy
documents; visibility of lobbying efforts; the creation/facilitation of public spaces
for engagement; and mainstream media and social media presence. A review of
data produced by the think tanks using these indicators shows that while some
may be considered strong in one area, they may not perform well on others. It is
also interesting to observe that while some think tanks go to considerable lengths
to present and analyse data about their performance, others are less forthcoming.
By far the strongest think tank in terms of research outputs is the ESRI, probably
not surprisingly given the level of its human and financial resources. Among these,
in 2017, were 24 completed research projects and a further 42 ongoing projects,
40 reports, 62 journal articles, 24 book chapters, and 24 research bulletins, as
well as research papers, notes and special articles, emphasising the predominantly
academic nature of its approach. A strong output performance was also reported
by Eurofound, SJI and the IIEA. Of the think tanks analysed, Eurofound is
the only one to trace the presence of its research in policy documents or other
sources, reporting use of its policy analysis in 81 out of 272 (30%) key EU policy
documents and 720 references in peer-review journals (Eurofound, 2019, p 35).
166
Promoting policy analysis

The first part of this chapter highlighted the role of think tanks, not just in
producing but also promoting policy analysis. Two indicators can be used to
capture activity in this area: direct engagement and promotion. The first of these
is engagement with policy makers, a key aspect of which is ‘lobbying’. Lobbying
can be defined as a matter that relates to the ‘development or modification of any
public policy or any public programme’ and to ‘the preparation or amendment
of any law’ (Lobbying.ie, 2019). In most cases, engagement in lobbying can
now be captured from the lobbying register set up under the Regulation of
Lobbying Act 2015. Engagement with policy makers may also include activities
such as presentations to Dáil committees. The second indicator tries to capture
how think tanks promote their policy analysis. This may take place through the
organisation of, or participation in, presentations, seminars, conferences and so
on, designed to highlight research activity.
Taking this latter indicator first, the ESRI again emerges as the strongest
performer in delivering presentations and briefings (143 in 2017) as well as
organising 28 seminars and conferences. These contributions are documented
in its annual review of research report that presents its outputs in an easily
accessible fashion. The ESRI, however, does not record any lobbying activities,
presumably because it does not see itself as playing an advocacy function.
Somewhat surprisingly, given its level of research activity, the ESRI notes only
two appearances before Oireachtas committees in 2017 (ESRI, 2018).
Eurofound also presents strong data on its role in sharing its research outputs,
recording its contribution to policy development events and estimating that
of its total of 236 such contributions, 97 (41%) were made at strategic, high-
value ‘priority events’ (Eurofound, 2019, p 35). By contrast, another quasi-
governmental think tank, the IPHI, presents little evidence of its efforts to insert
its research outputs into the policy process.
Clearly, the task of research promotion and data analytics requires additional
investment. In the case of the IIEA, which records few lobbying activities, high-
profile events are organised, both in Dublin and in Brussels. Of note in this case
is the fact that, as well as employing 14 research staff, the IIEA also employs four
people in its creative unit and two with responsibility for communications (www.
iiea.com/staff). This represents a substantial investment, but does perhaps help
to explain why it has the highest ranking of any Irish think tank on the Global
Go To Think Tank Index (McGann, 2018).
On the engagement indicator, lobbying and research promotion, the data
presented by SJI is especially noteworthy, with 129 returns recorded on the
lobbying register between January 2016 and July 2019 (www.lobbying.ie). This
is the highest level of reported lobbying activity among Irish think tanks and
is indicative of proactive advocacy and engagement with policy makers, some
formal, much of it informal. Given that the organisation only has seven staff
members, it represents a considerable investment of time and energy. However,
167
it is not possible to ascertain whether this translates into a high level of influence
on policy formation.
Finally, the level of mainstream media and social media presence is often taken
as an indicator of influence on policy. Here two streams of potential influence
need to be recognised. The first is direct influence on policy makers, whereas
the second is the influence on the public who in turn may exert influence on
politicians. As with the other indicators, not all think tanks prioritise the capture
and reporting of data on their mainstream media or social media presence, with
reporting of mainstream media activity being limited to a minority of think
tanks. Of those who do report on mainstream media, SJI, the ESRI and the
CCBS are the most prominent in reporting high levels participation in radio
and TV interviews, with SJI providing a detailed breakdown of press releases
issued and stories carried about the organisation in the national and local
print media.
Most think tanks have a social media presence, with Twitter being the most
widely used platform. Eurofound (12,000 followers), ESRI (8,857 followers),
IIEA (8,053 followers) and IPHI (6,109) are the most widely followed as of July
2019. Apart from Twitter, some organisations also have a presence on Facebook,
Eurofound (9,122 followers), IIEA (8,360) and TASC (1,751) being the most
prominent. Interestingly, only two organisations, Eurofound and SJI, actively
report on the actual level of engagement with their websites. Eurofound reports
almost 2.89 million webpage views in 2018 and almost 162,000 PDF downloads.
Meanwhile, SJI’s 2017 annual report notes that there were 4 million hits on the
website in that year, with 700 unique visitors recorded each weekday. While the
purpose of website usage is not clear, of any indicator, this is one of the most
significant, as it suggests a significant number of users actively reaching out to
the organisations in question.
Conclusion
In presenting this data on the activities of think tanks in Ireland, and on the proxy
indicators of influence, it is, of course, important to recognise that the research
outputs of quasi-governmental think tanks are likely to exert stronger influence
on policy makers than those of other think tanks. It seems logical to think that
the outputs of organisations such as the ESRI, the LRC, Eurofound and the
IPHI are likely to have greater influence, as these were set up and continue to be
heavily funded by the state or the EU. The influence challenge for autonomous
or quasi-autonomous think tanks is ever greater. Without greater efforts on
the part of these think tanks to trace the presence of their research in policy
documents, it will be difficult to know if significant influence does or can ever
exist. However, it can be argued that by presenting rigorously researched policy
analysis, often challenging mainstream perspectives, such think tanks deliver an
important public service. Unfortunately, as is the case with think tanks across the
world, there is a constant struggle to resource their activities.
168
Notes
1 The decision on which organisations are considered to be think tanks has been guided by
the 2018 Global Go To Think Tank Index and by a database search of media references to
think tanks in Ireland between 2000 and 2019. It is further informed by the typologies and
definitions presented in the first part of the chapter. As a result, university-based research
institutes are excluded.
2 ESRI Financial Statements for the year ended 2017
3 Law Reform Commission, 38th Annual Report, 2016
4 Eurofound (2019)
5 Grant Thornton, Financial Statements, The Institute of International and European Affairs for
the year ending 2017
6 Centre for Cross Border Studies, Statement of Financial Activities for the year ended 31 July
2018
7 Grant Thornton Financial Statements The Institute of Public Health in Ireland for the Financial
Year Ended 31 December 2018
8 TASC Europe Studies, Directors Report and Financial Statements for the year ended
31st December 2017
9 Lolek Limited, Trading as The Iona Institute, Income and Expenditure Account for the Year
Ended 31 December 2017
10 No Annual Report or financial statements on the organisation website
11 Directors Report and Financial Statements for the year ended 30 June 2018
12 Financial statements for the year ended 31 December 2017
13 www.lgiuireland.ie
14 www.collinsinstitute.ie
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170
TWELVE
Civil society organisations

and policy analysis
Mary P. Murphy and Orla O’Connor
Introduction
Over the past 30 years, civil society organisations (CSOs) have assumed an
important role in Irish social, economic and environmental policy and have
demonstrated resilience and versatility in their engagement with policy formation.
Civil society has arguably led the social transformation of Ireland, as recent
referenda have demonstrated, and the political elite has followed civil society’s
lead in debating and demanding the type of social change that leads Ireland into
the 21st century. The historical and contemporary role of civil society will be
particularly important now, at a moment of flux and reflection, as the fault-lines
exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, and already rehearsed in the historic 2020
general election, are laid bare. A broader public policy story about civil society
would affirm and celebrate the political vitality and leadership of civil society;
however, this book is not about public policy per se, but is more narrowly focused
on ‘policy analysis’ and hence focuses more on CSOs’ engagement with public
policy institutions and process – a narrower story. This story is not, however, one-
dimensional, but should be read in the context of the already proven ideational,
campaigning and mobilising power of civil society [and social movements].
This chapter explores the types of capacity CSOs need for the different policy
analysis functions, including research, advice, advocacy and communication.
Two major themes emerge from the analysis. First, CSOs utilise a diverse range
of models of change and their engagement with public policy does not evolve
in a linear fashion but ebbs and flows. CSOs adapt their models of change to
meet their immediate political environment, in some cases changing how they
contribute to policy analysis. Technological changes, particularly Twitter and
use of online surveys, also transform the context of how social media is used to
utilise policy analysis and advocacy. The second theme relates to changes in the
political opportunity structure (POS) CSOs find themselves in. Over the years
of social partnership (SP) (see Chapter 10 and later in this chapter) (1987–2008),
there was a rich institutional network of policy processes, committees and formal
deliberations, albeit not necessarily inclusive. Since the 2008 global financial crisis,
CSOs’ overall space for policy analysis has changed and is somewhat reduced.
However, post-crisis, ‘new politics’ (NP) is characterised by new parliamentary
and public forms of policy making that require new forms of policy-analytical
171
capacity with different implications for CSOs. Recent pandemic consultative

processes, while also not always inclusive, have demonstrated the contemporary
relevance and capacity of CSOs.
This chapter briefly introduces Irish CSOs and offers a typology to assess
how diverse CSOs relate to policy analysis and related capacities. It then
chronologically traces the past three decades, drawing attention to how key
changes in the POS impact on CSOs’ approaches to policy analysis. The chapter
then sets out two case studies. The first, complementing Chapter Fifteen, reflects
on CSO policy analysis in the post-crisis context of deliberative national policy
processes. The second draws attention to the evolution of pre-budget submissions
(PBSs) through the new European Semester process. The conclusion reflects on
future challenges for policy analysis capacity for the community and voluntary
sector in Ireland.
CSOs and policy analysis

How do Irish CSOs acquire and utilise knowledge in policy processes (Howlett,
2009)? Following Edwards (2005), we understand CSOs as associations working
in the public sphere towards normative goals, but confine our analysis to the
domestic ‘community and voluntary’ sector in Ireland. This includes charities
as well as a diverse range of bodes including community groups, voluntary and
non-profit organisations, and social enterprises, which, while diverse, aspire to
the common bond of solidarity (Fraser, 2013). We include organisations that are
more activist and social movement in style but that participate in policy processes,
particularly in reproductive rights and environmental policy. We confine ourselves
to national policy and domestic-oriented CSOs and exclude trade unions or
representative sectoral organisations from professional groups, think tanks, and
international CSOs.
Generally, in the context of increased regulation, recent decades have witnessed
a growth in formalisation and professionalisation of CSOs. The past 100 years has
seen a growth in the range and type of CSOs, sectoral and interest groups, local,
national and international, voluntary and professional, large and small. Benefacts’
(2018) estimate of at least 29,000 non-profit organisations, representing about
11% of all organisations in Ireland, is likely to be a significant underestimate as it
does not include many thousands of small, local, non-profit organisations (Visser,
2018). We are hampered by few studies of their approach to policy analysis
and have little evidence of their policy capacity. The particular form policy
analysis and advocacy takes in CSOs reflects their underlying values and identity.
In Ireland, the language of ‘community’ and ‘voluntary’ reflect the important
contributions of different traditions, ideologies and models of change over the
history of the Irish state.
In practice, much CSO activity is driven by volunteering and service provision-
type activities, including sport, rather than political engagement (Murphy, 2011).
The traditional relationship between the state and voluntary sector varies but
172
Civil society organisations and policy analysis
often reflects a subservient, clientalistic, political culture where voluntary CSOs

operate ‘in the shadow of the state’ (Murphy, 2011, p 170). Community in
Ireland is primarily understood as a geographical space, but can also mean a
community of interest (for example, lone parents). From the 1970s, community
development processes funded by the European Union (EU) generated greater
capacity for policy analysis. Since the 2008 crisis, services traditionally delivered
by CSOs have been opened up to market actors, and advocacy restrictions (‘gag
clauses’) are now common in service-delivery agreements limiting CSOs’ policy
capacity and activity (Harvey, 2014; CWI, 2015).
CSOs vary considerably in their model of change and, over time, are shaped
by and also shape broader processes of dedemocratisation or redemocratisation
of Irish public policy processes. The growth of policy-analytical capacity is not
linear; capacity has been severely eroded since the economic crisis and over
periods of intense austerity, and prior to this was also curtailed in the context
of ideological whims of governments. Figure 12.1 offers a basic typology of
Irish CSOs as they relate to policy analysis. Most CSOs will more likely find
themselves in intersections of this typology rather than as A, B, C, or D as ideal
types. We note the false distinction between service and advocacy, with many
service organisations engaging in forms of self-advocacy, and with multiple forms
and levels of individual, societal and transformational advocacy.
At one end of the continuum, A, some CSOs are dominated by service
delivery, with policy influencing a more peripheral activity (for example, CSOs
that focus on traditional voluntary sector service delivery and may engage in
limited policy analysis, such as joining campaigns or submitting a submission to a
specific policy process). Some CSOs in B, however, while maintaining services as
their dominant function, also invest significantly in policy influencing, often using
their experiential learning as a form of policy analysis and expertise (for example,
Focus Ireland). Other CSOs found in C provide services to affiliate members,
but are primarily focused on policy and political institutions (for example, the
National Youth Council of Ireland). Finally, those CSOs in D are largely of the
activist type. Their core work is focused on mobilisation, but nonetheless they
Figure 12.1: Policy analysis capacity continuum
A B C D
Service Service Institutional Activist
and policy policy focus focus
Low High Low

capacity capacity capacity
Source: Authors’ own elaboration
173
utilise and sometimes produce critical policy analysis (for example, Abortion
Rights Campaign).
This is not a static framework; organisations adapt in the context of changing
internal and external environments. In 2019, a national children’s charity closed
down its policy and advocacy section in favour of investing those resources in
trauma-related services, thus moving from B to B/A. Women’s Aid, a large
domestic violence service provider, in the context of reduced funding refocused
its policy capacity from internal staff to engaging external consultants, thus
moving from B to B/A. The National Women’s Council of Ireland (NWCI),
as a consequence of changing POS, new technologies and its own reflection,
became more activist in its model of change, shifting from C to C/D. In the
1990s, the Society of St Vincent De Paul responded to the changing POS of SP
by building a policy analysis capacity while retaining its core services, moving
from A to B.
An ongoing tension is the degree to which government-funded service delivery
CSOs can and do ‘bite the hand that feeds them’ and engage in advocacy. It is
not clear that Irish democracy is mature enough for funders to accept critical
engagement from CSOs dependent on government funding. While some CSOs
raise unrestricted funding to support advocacy, 75 larger CSOs are more reliant
on resourcing policy capacity through the statutory Scheme to Support National
Organisations, which spends €10m per annum (Pobal, 2019) for front-line service
delivery, organisational development and policy development. Funded CSOs
report 30% of the funding invested in awareness raising and advocacy leading to
increased staff capacity, and 35% more research and development activity (Pobal,
2019). CSOs also access competitive grants for increasing policy and analytical
capacity from the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission and the Irish
Research Council’s New Foundations Grant. In 2017, Campus Engage emerged
to promote more engaged research involving CSOs, while the EU Horizon 2020
and national funding programmes increasingly reward such practice. Many CSOs
demonstrate policy analysis capacity, yet there are deficits. Senior civil servants
observe that the capacity to translate lived experience into policy analysis, a
unique selling point of CSOs, is often underutilised by CSOs, leaving policy
makers to access such perspective from service providers – or directly. Managers
and CEOs report capacity deficits and difficulty recruiting relevant skills and
experience. Despite shifts towards evidence-based policy and a premium placed
on quantitative over qualitative evidence (see Chapter Five, this volume), there
are key weakness and skill gaps in quantitative data analysis techniques.
So too social media has dramatically changed the focus of policy activity, with
Twitter now a key site for utilisation of policy analysis and forum for exchange
and influencing government policy analysts (Lovejoy and Saxton, 2012). Visser
(2018) argues that CSOs need to continue to evolve and change to meet the new
dynamics of campaigning and advocacy, for example galvanising opportunities in
ground-up initiatives that have gained traction on social media, as was the case
in the participation of NWCI in the ground-up campaign to extend pandemic-
174
era maternity leave (NWCI, 2020). However, social media disintermediation

also occurs as people coordinate directly without traditional organisations (see
Chapter Seventeen, this volume). CSOs are also faced with technical challenges
and the need to develop capacity to meet big data policy developments including
increasing regulation requirements such as General Data Protection Regulation.
As happens elsewhere (Goodwin and Phillips, 2015) some Irish CSOs have
restructured internal social media capacity from policy/advocacy teams to
marketing sections, with negative consequences for policy analysis.
CSO political opportunity structures

The 2000s have witnessed ‘deep structural changes’ in relationships between civil
society and states across Europe, and a devaluation, defunding and reregulation
of the contribution of civil society to democratic decision making (Acheson
and Visser, 2016). This section traces recent changes in the POS for CSOs in
Ireland, moving from a pre-crisis period of social partnership (1987–2002), to
a cooling-off period where the state sought to limit the power and influence
of civil society (2002–11), onwards though the crisis period that defunded key
capacities (2011–14), and ending with a post-crisis period (2014–present) of NP
with new opportunities for participative and deliberative public policy processes
(Reidy and Buckley, 2017).
Pre-crisis: clientalism and corporatism (1987–2002)

Murphy (2011) offers state-centred rationales that set the context of civil society
policy activism in Ireland; the populist nature of Irish political parties; patterns of
interest group formation; clientalism, corporatism and state strategies to silence
dissent; and more recently the impact on civil society of the increased marketisation
of public goods. Noting the political culture in a small island, and the pressure
to ‘wear the green jersey’, she notes the tendency towards conformism. Size is
important; the Irish political system and culture is characterised by the informality
and accessibility of its politicians. This culture influences how CSOs engage with
policy influencing, while many voluntary organisations can be somewhat servile,
albeit some CSOs have always had contestatory policy relevance.
The SP process is key to understanding Irish policy-making machinery over
the past three decades. SP began with the Programme for National Recovery,
which came into effect in 1987. SP, a corporatist institutional approach, involved
more than centralised wage bargaining; it also included agreement on a wide
range of economic and social policies between employers, trade unions, farmers’
organisations and government on wages over a three-year period (see Chapter
Ten, this volume). Over time, more, but not all, societal actors were included,
first on the margins, and then more centrally as CSOs embarked on a ‘long
march through the institutions’ (Allen, 1998, p 274), culminating in 1997 in
the creation of the Community and Voluntary Pillar (CVP) (Larragy, 2014). Six
175
national agreements were made over this period, during which CSOs participated
intensely in a diverse range of policy forums and rose to the challenge of new
forms of policy analysis requiring new skills that included macro-economic policy
analysis, fiscal, budgetary and taxation analysis, and capacity to cost proposals
and to make succinct and tangible demands. A particular skill set was required
to mediate and negotiate demands with government, with other social partners,
and perhaps most of all within the CVP.
Much has been debated about the merits of civil society engagement with
social partnership, with some considering it a co-option into the state, and others
considering it a route to power (Kirby and Murphy, 2011), but less has been
written about the degree to which entry into SP shaped civil society’s policy
and analytical capacity. CSOs had to first demonstrate sufficient policy capacity
to merit their presence in relevant processes and institutions. This capacity was
developed through the creation of the National Economic and Social Forum in
1993, and over time CSOs contributed to problem solving and policy formation
so that, after exposure in the National Economic and Social Council, in 1996
the CVP joined SP (to be followed later by the Environmental Pillar). Unequal
CSO capacities to participate (resources, knowledge and skills) led to internal
power dynamics within the CVP. At times, collective capacity was enhanced and
smaller CSOs were enabled to grow policy capacity, but in other instances, some
CSOs with lesser capacity, and often representing more marginalised interests,
perceived that they had been excluded from effective participation.
Assessing policy capacity of CSOs means distinguishing the particular
contributions CSOs might have been expected to bring to the policy arena.
It is somewhat ironic that the very fact of participation in SP was to pull some
organisations away from, what was for many, a core strength, a form of policy
capacity that was grounded in the ability to translate the lived experience of poor
policy and/or poor implementation through the policy process. Other CSOs
offered a different more macro type of analysis in the form of a political economy
critique of distributional policy, while others enacted a more representative
role for particular groups, for example youth or women. Regardless of their
policy capacity, most non-governmental organisations experienced asymmetric
engagement (Larragy, 2014) and required skills of persistence, policy innovation
and good analysis, but also capacity to recognise and make tactical use of changes
in economic and political cycles (Marks and McAdam, 1996, pp 259–63).
A cooling off and a crisis period (2002–13)

Regardless of their participation in SP, CSOs faced a more hostile climate with
the change of government in 2002. In political economy terms, this resulted
in monetary union overlapping with shifts in power associated with rapid
financialisation of the Irish economy (O’Riain, 2017). Harvey (2014) found
state funders using service-level agreements (SLAs) to curtail policy and advocacy.
CSOs fell out of political favour, were characterised in public discourse as the
176
‘poverty industry’ and were delegitimised. In the mid-2000s, SP fatigue was

apparent and within that a growing exasperation with what some perceived as an
unwieldly CSO culture of participation in SP processes. SP did not survive the
2008 financial crisis and was replaced with a much weaker form of social dialogue
in which the CVP meets bilaterally with several government departments.
CSOs were also damaged disproportionately by the crisis, both financially, as
government reduced its funding for the voluntary and community sector by an
average of 40% at a time when overall government funding fell by –7.1%, but
also politically, as state power was centralised. A July 2008 government circular
(S180/20/10/0964B) required the reduction, merger or abolition of 41 state
agencies. A ‘bonfire of the quangos’ saw a substantial number of social policy-
related state agencies closed down or merged. Particularly impactful was the
loss of Combat Poverty Agency and the Equality Authority, both of which had
proactively supported policy capacity building for CSOs, with an emphasis on
more marginalised groups. Harvey (2014) finds that the most lasting political
change has been the depletion of the state’s social policy infrastructure. Some
voluntary organisations have been almost overwhelmed, leaving service delivery
an absolute priority. Employment in the policy-relevant CSO sector fell from
53,098 in 2008 to 36,638 in 2015 (Harvey, 2014), and, given that services were
protected, a significant number of these losses were in policy capacity. The
outcome was a substantial reduction in the institutional capacity of the state in
the social policy field. This had consequences for the POS within which many
CSOs worked, with less access to policy resources including data, institutional
processes and influencing opportunity.
Kirby and Murphy (2011) find that Irish civil society became muted over the
early to mid-crisis period as the state took a more proactive role in co-opting civil
society and shaping its direction. The Charities Act 2009 established the Charities
Regulatory Authority, which restricts advocacy to circumstances where ‘promotion
of that cause relates directly to the advancement of the charitable purposes of the
body’. This and SLA campaigning restrictions combined to create widespread fears
among CSOs, and to some degree introduced elements of self-censorship among
some CSOs, and a curtailment of advocacy-related policy work. Various CSO-led
responses to the threat to CSOs emerged, including the Advocacy Initiative, Is
Féidir Linn and Claiming Our Future, all of which sought to recover and defend
CSOs place in the Irish public sphere. This period also saw the philanthropic sector
exit and trust funding to fall over 80% (Visser, 2018). New philanthropic sources
also emerged, for example, Open Society funding of organisations campaigning
for reproductive rights (see the case studies later in the chapter regarding legal
challenges to CSOs rights to use international funders to fund advocacy).
NP in a post-crisis period (2013–19)

Post-crisis, what remained of SP was a form of social dialogue or ‘access without
influence’. CSOs consequently moved to other forms of influencing that required
177
different policy capacities. They did so in the context of NP, a period of post-
crisis democratic reform under a minority coalition governments dependent on
the 2016–20 confidence and supply agreement between Fine Gael and Fianna
Fáil. NP was characterised by a series of parliamentary reforms that strengthen
parliamentary power, widen the capacity for opposition parties to influence the
legislative agenda through Private Members’ Bills, improve the resourcing of
parliamentary committees and considerably reform the budgetary process (Reidy
and Buckley, 2017). This gave CSOs more opportunity to influence the legislative
agenda and directly engage with legislative processes, and this in turn required
new policy capacities in CSOs (see Chapter Thirteen, this volume).
The crisis diminished trust in all public institutions, including CSOs, but most
particularly governments and political institutions. Reflecting shifts elsewhere
towards more participative and deliberative forms of democracy (see Chapter
Fourteen, this volume), Ireland has also experimented with a range of new
policy-making processes. These are evident locally in local authority participatory
budgeting processes and in public participation networks (see Chapter Six),
and nationally in Constitutional Conventions (CCs) and Citizens’ Assemblies
(CAs) (see Chapter Fifteen, this volume, and Reidy and Buckley, 2017). NP is
also associated with a new regulatory environment designed to restore trust in
political and public institutions. Lobbying was regulated under the Regulation
of Lobbying Act 2015, which introduced an online register of lobbyists. CSOs
engaging in lobbying must now complete quarterly lobbying returns. The
Electoral Amendment Act 2016 now regulates political donations and controls
the operation of third parties, including CSOs, electoral activity, campaigning
and advocacy work. The Standards in Public Office Commission’s (SIPO) recent
direction that some CSOs return grants judged to have been made for political
purposes has been heavily contested by CSOs (led by the Irish Council of Civil
Liberties), with Amnesty Ireland recently winning a high-profile court case
contesting SIPO’s ruling. CWI (2015) and Murphy and colleagues (2020) note
a significant post-crisis increase in commissioning and procurement previously
funded through block grants to CSOs. This has consequences for policy capacity.
CSOs in the domestic violence sector, for example, found that funding ring-
fenced for services limited their capacity to engage with relevant national and
local policy, while less limiting resources during the pandemic enabled greater
collaboration, innovation and influence.
CSOs also coordinate to incorporate the demands of other CSOs. A 2018
Children’s Right’s Alliance campaign focusing on child poverty, for example, was
echoed by other CSOs and reinforced through its own PBS. Capacity to work
together is not generic to CSOs. Both Visser (2018) and Pobal (2019) report
insufficient contemporary collaboration among CSOs, particularly among larger
organisations, while Murphy and colleagues (2020) find commissioning and
procurement processes make it more difficult for organisations to collaborate.
Finally, CSOs find that policy consultation processes change as statutory actors
make more use of electronic survey instruments such as Survey Monkey. Use of
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such surveys, and increased use of predetermined questions and frames, may limit
the depth and range of potential issues that can be raised during consultations. On
the other hand, such instruments are potentially time-saving and economic to use,
and may, if used effectively, open up consultation to a wider range of participants
including service users and citizens (see Chapter Seventeen, this volume).
Case studies of policy-analytical capacity in the community sector

The following contemporary case studies explore the relationship between policy
analysis, capacity and POS, examining changes in processes and avenues for
participation in social policy influencing and their consequences for policy-
analytical capacity. The first case study examines the use of new types of
participative and deliberative policy making (see Chapter Fifteen, this volume),
while the second reflects on the continual process of influencing PBSs and how
CSOs have adapted their approach over time (see Chapters Seven and Seventeen,
this volume).
Case study 1: Policy analysis and capacity in deliberative policy processes

This case study reflects on how NCWI both shaped and participated in policy
processes related to the successful 2018 referendum to repeal the Eighth
Amendment of the Constitution Act 1983, which had essentially banned access
to abortion in Ireland. After decades of pressure, the government committed
in 2016 to establishing a CA to make recommendations to the Oireachtas on
further constitutional changes, including the Eighth Amendment. Justice Laffoy
was appointed as chairperson and 99 members were randomly selected from the
citizens of Ireland. Five meetings of the CA, held from January to April 2017
and totalling more than 90 hours, focused on abortion.
CSOs, including NWCI, had previous experience of engaging in a similar
deliberative process in the CC that had made recommendations on eight policy
areas, including marriage equality and issues relating to gender equality. The
CA, however, differed from the CC in that it did not include politicians in its
membership. For CSOs, the new process offered a unique way to engage with the
public and required many different forms of policy engagement. At the outset,
many CSOs including the NWCI were sceptical and questioned whether it was
a way for government to avoid providing political leadership. Some questioned
whether to engage in a process that might enable government to avoid public
pressure to address structural societal issues and/or might risk concrete policy
change. The initial questioning of POSs offered by government to CSOs is
absolutely valid, and demonstrates analytical capacity for mature reflection to
assess the advantages and disadvantages of different POSs.
The CA process on the Eighth Amendment required significant investment of
policy resources by relevant CSOs. The initial deliberation focused on the form
of the CA, engagement with the secretariat, and decisions regarding experts
179
providing advice to the CA. This required drawing on broad knowledge across
diverse fields, including experts with legal, constitutional, academic and medical
backgrounds. Once the CA was in process, 40 experts discussed issues relating
to pregnancy, including crisis pregnancies, fatal foetal anomalies, international
evidence, rape, sex education and ethics. The CA request for submissions resulted
in 13,000 published submissions (on the CA website). CSOs’ campaigning
to repeal the Eighth Amendment used the submissions as an opportunity to
influence public debate outside of the CA, an intense process for many CSOs,
requiring consultation with their members and challenging those in favour of
repeal to propose legislative models for the provision of abortion. This careful
and risky balancing act required capacity for judgment. NWCI wanted to push
the CA to recommend the widest possible access to abortion while also wanting
realistic recommendations that could be carried through the CA voting process
and be supported in the subsequent political process of the Joint Oireachtas
Committee and ultimately a referendum.
The policy capacity and creativity NWCI needed to engage in such a process
to some degree developed through the process. Some CSOs, pro- and anti-
repeal, addressed the CA and participated in a panel discussion during which
CA members could pose questions. This unique and unpredictable process gave
CSOs insight into how much thought and consideration CA members were
investing in the policy process, many of whom used the opportunity to dissect,
question and challenge opposing views. A much-needed capacity was the ability
to critically engage with evidence and sources. Pro-repeal CSOs argued that the
experiences of the women who had suffered under the Eighth Amendment, and
had been forced to travel for abortion, needed to be heard. A full day was given
to personal testimony of different forms that enabled anonymity (including verbal
presentations, audio recordings, and written testimony). Policy analysis aimed at
social change requires that the lived experiences of those directly affected by the
policy be incorporated into the evidence. This is impactful, but strongest when
combined with the relevant analysis of the CSOs. The learned capacity to root
policy analysis in lived experience was a feature of the subsequent referendum
campaign. This approach will likely become more visible in the campaigning
methods of CSOs.
The CA was a very concentrated and focused deliberative way for CSOs to
engage a microcosm of the public and to attempt to convince them of their
desired outcome. A critical learning point from the process is that when certain
factors were put in place, CA members gave time, thought and consideration
to the issues, and put the needs of those most affected at the centre of their
deliberations. This requires investment in space and support for deliberation,
and in the provision of facts and comprehensive evidence, personal testimony,
international perspectives, and the perspectives of campaigners and credible
representative organisations with track records. CSOs, which tend to engage
with those already convinced of the desired change, must build a different type
of policy capacity to enable them to engage in a style of policy making that
180
targets the unengaged public in policy engagement processes. The engagement

with the CA in this case also required CSOs to change the way in which they
engaged with the media during the process. Most important was the collaboration
between the CSOs in the context of the CA; this was instrumental in building
trust between organisations and individuals and in laying the foundations for
future alliances, including, in this instance, the Together for Yes campaign, the
successful civil society campaign that mobilised the Yes vote in the referendum.
Case study 2: Influencing budgetary processes and the European Semester process
A traditional, somewhat ritualistic, process of CSOs attempting to influence
budget resource allocation and policy making takes place through annualised
PBSs. The Irish state facilitates this process with the contemporary Department
of Social Protection, Community and Rural Development and the lslands
hosting Pre-Budget and Post-Budget Forums, formalised processes where
budget parameters are presented by the government and CSOs give their views
and responses to the presentations in ‘listening’ forums or focus groups. This
state-controlled space, while popular with lobby groups, has been critiqued
as restricting more meaningful distributional debate and is thought to be as
much about controlling CSO expectations as influencing policy (Acheson and
Visser, 2016).
There is a striking gap in perception between the senders and receivers of PBSs.
In practice, few CSOs have sufficient analytical capacity to influence budget
policy, and, to the frustration of government, many iterate budget demands for
the purposes of communicating their relevance to their own members. Senior
civil servants comment critically on the quality of what appear to be ‘cut and
paste’ operations likened to ‘single transferable submissions’ (Walsh et al, 2013).
However, from a CSO perspective, developing broad PBS often makes sense as
a useful way to capture national attention for national budgetary and legislative
policy campaigns, and CSOs believe they have capacity to effectively influence.
In contemporary times, CSOs report that they use the annual budget process
strategically to cohere internal policy positions, to engage with their own
members, and to select a small core number of issues for budget campaigns,
often in collaboration with other national CSOs. CSOs also knowingly
include legislative rather than budget demands reflecting the absence of other
opportunities to influence the legislative process.
Post-crisis, attention has also turned to relatively new institutional processes
supporting the Irish budget including the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council, and
Parliamentary Budget Scrutiny supported by a Parliamentary Budget Office
(Reidy and Buckley, 2017). There are also emerging practices of gender and
equality proofing overseen by the Department of Public Expenditure Reform.
As Chapter Fourteen of this volume discusses, CSOs such as the NWCI have
had to ‘run to stand still’ in developing policy capacity to contribute gender and
fiscal expertise to the process of budget proofing, but government departments
181
have also been challenged in their own capacity to generate data and meaningful
proofing exercises. In this context, collaboration has been an important part of
capacity building between state actors and CSOs. A recent review of the proofing
process by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
concluded that supports for policy capacity were needed to further advance and
embed proofing processes and practices. A capacity gap is also likely to emerge
between those invited inside the process and those left to engage with budget
and policy proofing from the outside.
A particular post-crisis change relates to the degree to which the Irish budgetary
process is now integrated into the EU Semester process,1 which encourages both
the member states and the European Commission to take into account the
experience on employment and social issues of relevant CSOs in the process
of agreeing Annual Growth Surveys, Country Reports and Country Specific
Recommendations, all of which inform national budget processes. From a civil
society perspective, skills and resources are needed for successful participation
in such processes. However, much will also depend on the motivation, skills
and context of member state and EU-level policy makers and the degree to
consultation processes are not only well designed, but also ‘meaningfully’ engage
with civil society.
Not all CSOs have the resources or capacity to engage in the European Semester
process, but the experiences of the organisations that have engaged in the process
offers insights for policy analysis. Some CSOs find the processes opaque and
arbitrary with little sense about what might be included in Country Reports.
This leaves some CSOs feeling that engagement in the process is an ineffective use
of time with little impact. They argue there is little evidence that any significant
social issue has been progressed through participation of civic society in the
semester process. Some CSOs argue that the issue is not the underlying lack of
capacity of social CSOs to participate but the degree to which the underlying
dynamic privileges the economic through treaty obligations, legislation and
dominant ideology. An example is the experience of homelessness CSOs that
have tried to raise housing and homelessness issues through the semester process.
The housing crisis, for example, has generally only appeared in the context of the
potential impact of mortgage arrears on banks with no discussion of the potential
social impact of foreclosing mortgages to stabilise banking. The 2019 Country
Report references to housing need and family homelessness were not reflected
in the final Country Specific Recommendations. This is the general experience
of homelessness in the overall semester process across the EU and points to the
need for the European Commission to reform the process so CSOs can more
effectively engage and influence outcomes.
Conclusion: innovation and new campaigning

This chapter draws attention to diversity within CSOs and the multiple ways
that different CSOs respond to similar POSs. In a reinforcing process, once
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CSOs become insiders their potential for policy-analytical capacity grows,

with likely consequences for solidarity with those outside (Fraser, 2013). The
range of skills includes, among other capacities, tactical and strategic assessment,
fiscal policy to identify budget implications, awareness of public interest, use
of personalised evidence, rational argumentation and persuasive capacity.
Capacity to set agendas, frame narratives, collaborate and network are needed
for successful engagement in more recent deliberative processes. Visser’s (2018)
post-crisis evaluation of Irish civil society highlights five challenges: funding;
capacity, skills and staffing; regulation and compliance; public perception; and
innovation and new campaigning, while Pobal (2019) confirms the regulatory
environment, recruitment and collaboration as being key challenges. As policy
capacity grows in the civil service, some CSOs may feel more exposed (Walsh
et al, 2013). That said, COVID-19 responses have demonstrated the best-practice
innovation, responsiveness and effectiveness of some civil society actors in Ireland,
in, for example, gender, homelessness, domestic violence and reproductive rights
(Council of Europe, 2020).
The case studies offered in the chapter demonstrate that CSOs are versatile
and pragmatic in their policy analysis and capacity to proactively and reactively
engage with new forms of policy process and democratisation, including evolving
institutional budgetary processes and wholly new deliberative processes. At the
same time, many service-dominated CSOs are weaker than the case studies
might suggest or are dominated by SLAs that effectively deny them policy-
influencing capacity. Critical public(s), including other CSOs as well as political
and state actors, often perceive CSO policy-analytical capacity through their
own critical lens and consequently may not always understand the motivation or
intent of specific CSOs or why they pursue specific influencing strategies. While
some CSOs have poor capacity and/or motivation, overall it appears that, in the
context of less institutionalisation, many CSOs may have a more diverse range
of opportunities and larger range of tools to use in policy influencing.
We end on a positive note, observing that despite funding pressures and
regulatory constraints CSOs remain committed to advocacy and influencing
public policy (Acheson and Visser, 2016, p 12), and continue to demonstrate
considerable capacity and resilience in this regard. It remains to be seen how they
will respond to the new political opportunity structure in what may emerge as
a quite different post-2020 political environment. We remind the reader that
capacity for policy analysis is not one-dimensional, but should be read in the
context of the already proven ideational, campaigning and mobilising power of
civil society, as well as the capacity and motivation of state and political actors
to engage.
Note
1 The European Semester is a multi-annual exchange/discussion between the European
Commission and member states to achieve the EU’s targets, both in terms of the Europe 2020
Strategy and of the Stability and Growth Pact.
183
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THIRTEEN
Political parties and the policy process

Maura Adshead and Diarmuid Scully
Introduction
This chapter examines the role that political parties play in the policy process.
There already exists a wealth of literature characterising the policy process, to
which this book is a welcome addition. Since, however, the focus of this chapter
is the role that political parties play in the policy process, we use a very simplified
model of the various stages in the policy process in order to examine how Irish
political parties operate in each of these stages (see Figure 13.1). We exclude
consideration of policy implementation, which is not the concern of political
parties per se.
For each of these stages in the policy process, we summarise the role that might
be expected of political parties in theory and how the Irish system operates in
practice. We draw attention to the differences in behaviour between larger and
smaller parties that are engendered by the political system, pointing in particular
to the peculiar impact of localism on the impact and role of Irish political parties.
We examine the key issues facing Irish political parties at each stage of the policy
process, giving illustrations and examples to elucidate our points. In carrying
out this task, we explore the extent to which the so-called ‘new politics’ might
have affected political party roles and performance (see also Chapters Four and
Twelve, this volume).
Figure 13.1: A simplified model of the policy process
Evaluation Agenda setting
Implementation Formulation
Adoption
Source: Author
187
Our investigation suggests that what we currently refer to as new politics, that
is, governments without a clear majority seeking consensual support for their
policies in Dáil Éireann, is not in fact such a new phenomenon in Ireland. There
has been no majority government since 1977. Fine Gael’s agreement to support
the economic reforms proposed by the minority Fianna Fáil government in 1987
– the so-called Tallaght Strategy (Mitchell, 2003) – together with Fianna Fáil’s
decision to abandon the principle of never entering a coalition, by going into
government with the Progressive Democrats in 1989 (Mitchell, 2000, p 131),
means that no party has governed alone since 1989. Programmatic government
has been normalised and consensus seeking has become the de facto modus
operandi for mainstream Irish political parties. The reality of the single transferable
vote (STV) version of proportional representation (PR) used in Ireland means
that no candidate seeking election can afford to stray too far from the wishes of
the median voter. To stand out on a limb is to alienate oneself from the potential
for vote transfers in the final election count. In this highly proportional system,
the opportunity for new and small parties to emerge is very real. What is new
about new politics is that this potential is finally being fully realised and that
longer established parties are now joined by an increasing number of smaller
parties and technical groupings in the Dáil. This raises the potential to shift the
balance of power away from the larger political parties, but as our analysis shows,
this tendency has been less marked than might have been expected.
Political parties and agenda setting

The role of political parties is central to the functional running of representative
democracy (Mansbridge, 2003). Parties are intended to aggregate societal demands
so that they may be represented and reflected in the political agenda (Downs,
1957; Bingham Powell, 2000). The contestation of ideas between political parties
is the bulwark of representative democracy.
Despite its obvious historical roots in the Westminster model of government,
the Irish party system is more of a ‘consensus democracy’ than a ‘majoritarian
democracy’. This is due to the STV version of PR used in the Irish electoral
system. PR-STV creates as close a relationship as possible between the proportion
of votes and seats won by each party, in order to produce a national parliament
that is truly representative of the division of political opinion in the country.
The result is highly personalised and localised electoral competition. In this
system, every vote counts and seats may be won on very small margins in the fifth
or sixth rounds of counts. The result is that Irish political parties are unusually
attuned to their local constituency views; even small groups hold a real capacity
to influence, and so the political agenda is very much subject to popular opinion.
The impact on the role of political parties in policy formulation is twofold.
First, the STV system of PR, which allows voters to mark as many
preferences as there are candidates in multiple-seat constituencies, not only
obliges candidates of the same party to compete against each other, but also
188
offers the opportunity for voters to switch between parties, according to

their preferences. This has a marked centripetal effect on policy positions:
candidates from different political parties who are hunting for second and third
preference votes tend to cluster policy positions in the middle ground, in order
to facilitate voters who may be inclined to switch party affiliations down their
list of preference. Second, there is an unusual degree of fluidity on the political
agenda between local and national political issues. On the one hand, local issues
can quickly become significant issues of national concern. Equally significant,
on the other hand, is the way in which the electoral system can refract national
policy issues into local politics.
Health care provides a perfect example. The vignette in Box 13.1 illustrates
how this can work out in practice and shows that notwithstanding an independent
national policy review on the most appropriate provision of health care, local
political demands were a sufficient driver for one Teachta Dála (TD) to stand
against the accepted policy of their political party to the point of being expelled
– rather than go against local wishes. The eventual decision of the party to admit
the TD into cabinet further illustrates a prevailing political culture that not only
tolerates and accepts this kind of behaviour from TDs, but is equally willing to
support a TD who ignores the policy analysis provided by independent health
care experts employed specifically to assess the situation.
Box 13.1: Agenda setting: the fluidity of local/national politics in

health care
Ireland has a long history of electing independent candidates who campaign on local
hospital issues. In the 2002 election, for example, three candidates stood on distinctive
health-related platforms. Paudge Connolly (Cavan-Monaghan) stood as the ‘hospital
action candidate’, with both Jerry Cowley (Mayo) and Liam Twomey (Wexford) seeking
improved, dedicated health services (Gallagher, 2003, p 102).
In the 2007 general election, Fine Gael won two of the three seats in the newly formed
Roscommon-South Leitrim constituency: Denis Naughten, who had been a TD for
Roscommon for ten years; and Frank Feighan, who was new to national politics.
As the 2011 election approached, concerns were expressed about the continuation of a
24-hour Accident and Emergency (A&E) service in Roscommon hospital. To retain Fine
Gael’s two seats in the constituency, party leader Enda Kenny travelled to Roscommon
and made a solemn pledge to retain 24-hour A&E services in Roscommon. Both TDs
were re-elected in February 2011 and Enda Kenny became Taoiseach.
In June 2011, a nationwide review of hospital care, triggered by the deaths of patients
in Ennis and Mallow hospitals, recommended ending the practice of providing 24-hour
A&E services in small regional hospitals on patient safety grounds (HIQA, 2011). The
189
government, acting on this advice, decided to end 24-hour A&E cover in Roscommon
and in other small hospitals around the country.
The Sinn Féin party put down a motion calling on the government to reverse its decision.
Denis Naughten voted against the government and was expelled from Fine Gael. Frank
Feighan voted with the government. Denis Naughten contested the next election as
an independent and was re-elected. He then went into government with Fine Gael and
became a cabinet minister, before resigning from office in 2018 following controversy over
his handling of the rural broadband issue. Frank Feighan, who suffered a considerable public
backlash over his support of the government decision in 2011, decided not to contest
the 2016 election, but was later nominated to the Seanad (upper house) by Enda Kenny.
In another electoral system, hospital closures and specialised care might be

considered issues of national policy rather than issues of specific local concern.
Moreover, it could be argued that by allowing local constituencies to vent their
concerns via the election of independents, the larger parties are able to treat these
as local issues and avoid making them the subject of national political debate. This
need not be the case. In the 2007 election, the Fine Gael–Labour coalition of
opposition against the incumbent Fianna Fáil–Progressive Democrat government
made health one of its primary campaign issues (Brandenburg and Zalinski,
2008). The point is that in the PR-STV electoral system, political parties may
choose whether to contest the election on local or national issues, thus providing
more opportunities for policy formulation to be determined by a wider range of
considerations than political party agendas alone.
Political parties and internal policy making

All Irish political parties are organised on a geographically defined branch
(cumann) network with members belonging to branches based in local electoral
areas. Higher levels of the organisations – district executive (comhairle ceanntar),
constituency executive (comhairle Dáil ceanntar) – comprise delegates selected
by these branches. In all parties, the supreme policy-making body is the annual
national conference (ard fhéis), open to all members. Between annual conferences
(ard fhéiseanna), the national executive – comprising the party leader, senior TDs
and party members elected at the conference – is responsible for overseeing the
running of the party, including the adoption of policy.
In theory, party members through the branch network, through their votes
at ard fhéiseanna and through representative forums such as the constituency
and national executives, have considerable say over party policy, but in practice
this is rarely the case. Most members are ‘convention fodder’ signed up by TDs
and aspirant TDs to deliver votes at candidate selection time. TDs cannot risk
a rival gaining control of sufficient delegate votes to seize a nomination from
them and accordingly ensure that party membership lists are well padded with
190
family, friends and neighbours. Such members are not expected, or facilitated,
to contribute to the policy agenda in any significant way.
Policy in Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil has for many years been largely determined
by the front benches and approved by the parliamentary parties. Ard fhéiseanna
still play a formal role, but they have become largely stage-managed affairs with
speakers and motions being chosen by the party headquarters staff. Little if any real
debate occurs any more. Local party organisations are primarily concerned with
managing intra-party electoral competition and members play little if any role in
the development of policy. These traditionally larger parties have a decentralised
system of candidate selection and both, typically, run more than one candidate per
constituency. This leads to a high degree of intra-party competition. Managing this
competition becomes a major focus of the party both locally and nationally and
a factor that inhibits the party membership’s role in policy formation. In policy
terms, parties now compete as what Katz and Mair (1995) describe as cartel parties:
professionalised parties that have become less attached to their (largely symbolic)
membership and more a part of ‘the system’, using an effective leadership to
compete for the balance of power and often distancing themselves from grass
roots. For Fine Gael, the decisive moment came when the party’s 2002 ard fhéis
adopted the report of the Strategy Review Group (Flannery, 2002), effectively
centralising policy-making power in the office of the party leader. For Fianna Fáil,
the strongest demonstration is perhaps Micheál Martin’s decision, in early 2018,
to commit the party to supporting the repeal of the Eighth Amendment to the
Constitution despite the fact that in excess of 80% of members at the party’s ard
fhéis, just a few weeks previously, had voted to adopt the opposite policy.
Other parties, such as the Labour Party and in particular the Greens, have a
very high degree of internal democracy. The Green Party is perhaps the most
open to policy proposals from the membership and was so against the idea of
being dominated by the centre that for many years operated without a formal
party leader, only electing one in 2001, 20 years after the party’s formation and
12 years after it won its first Dáil seat. Labour Party ard fhéiseanna tend to be
more openly democratic with decisions on such matters as whether to participate
in government being decided by the membership, but in practice most party
policy, particularly when the party is in government, is also determined by the
parliamentary party. For example, it is party policy that the leader be elected by
the membership, but in the 2016 Labour leadership election the parliamentary
party managed to ensure that Brendan Howlin was the only candidate nominated.
Neither Labour nor the Greens tend to run multiple candidates in constituencies.
This lack of intra-party competition at the electoral level may perhaps account,
in part, for the greater freedom to engage in policy discussion. In both parties,
decisions that are elsewhere made at the centre, for instance on whether to
enter government, have long been decided by the membership rather than the
parliamentary party. Policies advocated by these parties have a habit of being
initially opposed by the main parties only to be adopted by them later. Examples
include civil divorce, same-sex marriage and carbon tax.
191
Sinn Féin is a party going through a double transition: from being a small party
that did not usually run multiple candidates, to a larger party that occasionally
does; and from being a paramilitary-led organisation to parliamentary-led one.
Traditionally, policy in Sinn Féin was set by the centre with little direct input
by party members. This sort of democratic centralism was also a feature of
the former Workers’ Party and continues to be the norm in the parties of the
far left where effective input by party members into policy making is often
extremely limited. On the one hand, as Sinn Féin makes the journey from the
margins of Irish politics to the centre ground, albeit on the left, we can expect
party members to play an increasing role. However, as the party grows and the
opportunities to run more than one candidate appear, the prevailing logic of
centralised party organisation may counter this trend.
Ireland is the only country in the European Union (EU) that regularly elects
large numbers of independents to its parliament (Ehin et al, 2013). Independent
TDs by definition do not have political parties, but by offering their support to
parties in need of their number to make up a majority, they may have quite a
degree of influence on policy. A case in point would be independent TD Shane
Ross, who as Minister for Transport and Tourism in the Fine Gael minority
government supported by his group of independents, used his position in
government to propose an overhaul of the system of judicial appointments.
Typically, however, independents who are policy-driven are less common than
those who are locally motivated and their presence in government often does
much to shore up the influence of localism in national policy making.
Political parties and policy formulation

Notwithstanding the significance of the PR-STV electoral system in Irish
politics, it is still the case that Irish governments are formed and run by political
parties (Laver, 2005). Still, however, the need for candidates to garner preferences
beyond first place does not encourage them to take up policy positions outside
the identifiable ‘middle ground’. The political behaviour generated by this system,
in terms of the dynamics created by both the inter- and intra-party competition,
results in political parties that tend to ‘follow’ public opinion rather than taking
an independent lead on policy issues themselves.
The likelihood of governing in coalition further encourages this tendency. The
result is that a great deal of policy formulation is shunted, whenever possible, to
consensus-oriented processes and mechanisms. These may be technocratic, driven
by policy experts and civil servants in policy-specific ‘task forces’; or pragmatic,
as was the case for many years in the system of national social partnership that
lasted from 1987 to the global financial crisis in (Adshead, 2011; see also Chapter
Ten, this volume). More recently, the Citizens’ Assembly has served as a means
to formulate policy proposals on contentious policy issues (Farrell et al, 2013;
Suiter et al, 2014; see also Chapter Fifteen, this volume).
192
During the period of social partnership (1987–2009), Fianna Fáil-led

governments acted in the role of ‘honest broker’, mediating between the interests
of the social partners – workers, employers, farmers. There was a short break
with the advent of the ‘Rainbow Coalition’ (1994–97), which continued the
partnership arrangements in place, while arguably further complicating them by
adding a place at the table for the community and voluntary sector (Meade, 2005;
Larragy, 2006). These agreements, negotiated with and through government,
removed much of the process of policy making away from the Oireachtas and from
party political competition (Adshead, 2011). It is notable that Fianna Fáil never lost
control of government formation in elections while social partnership was in place.
In 2011, Fine Gael replaced Fianna Fáil as the largest party in Ireland,
governing first in coalition with Labour and then, after the 2016 general election,
with the support of independents and Fianna Fáil. Nevertheless, Fine Gael-led
governments have shown an equal tendency to secure a national consensus before
embarking on significant policy change. While this is partly due to the party’s
weak position in the Dáil, it is equally a consequence of preferring to follow a
popular policy consensus on potentially divisive social issues. Despite enjoying
the largest majority in the history of the state, the 2011–16 Fine Gael–Labour
coalition failed to reach an agreed position on marriage equality – opting instead
to kick the issue over to a citizen-led deliberative assembly in the form of the
Constitutional Convention (see Chapter Fifteen, this volume). It was through
a similar extra-parliamentary body that a policy formulation was eventually
proposed to legislate for abortion, enabling the government to finally tackle
a policy issue that few political parties had been keen to pursue (see Chapter
Twelve, this volume).
Both of these issues illustrate the capacity for mainstream political parties to
ignore important policy issues, either because they believe there is a consensus
in favour of the status quo, or because they perceive an issue to be too divisive to
render a ready consensus for policy change. The pressure to pragmatically follow
public opinion on key policy issues, rather than provide a principled policy lead,
is relieved by the willingness of Irish political parties to shunt divisive policy issues
into citizen-led deliberative forums, in the hope that they can build an ‘external
consensus’ without larger political parties needing to take a stand before they
are certain of where most support lies. It is in this context that independents
and smaller political parties are provided with an opportunity to exert influence
beyond their numbers because of the dynamics of the Irish electoral system.
The effect of this consensus-seeking approach is that among the traditionally
mainstream parties (Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil, Labour), electoral competition has
been based as much on competence and delivery as it has on any particular
political ideology. Within this context, smaller and more ideologically driven
parties can enjoy a degree of influence on the public policy process out of
proportion to their status or size. Smaller parties often play the role of ‘taste testers’
for new ideas, proposing them in the public domain through both parliamentary
and non-parliamentary processess. If these ideas gain public support, the major
193
parties adopt and implement them. This process of policy transmission from
minor to major parties has the effect of both increasing the influence of smaller
parties while preserving the electoral dominance of the larger.
Policy adoption
When it comes to adopting policy, in the Irish system, the balance of power
between government and parliament has historically been clearly tipped in
the government’s favour. Based as it was on the Westminister model, the Irish
parliament was not originally intended to be a policy driver, or initiator, in its
own right, but rather to approve draft legislation placed before it by government
(Robinson, 1974, p 6). The drafting of legislation is carried out by specialist
barristers in the Office of Parliamentary Draftsmen, operating under the auspices
of the Attorney General (Donelan, 1992, p 3).
Until the 2016 Dáil reforms, the government’s control of the parliamentary
agenda, reflected in its standing orders, severely restricted Private Members’
Bills (PMBs), supporting the view that in Ireland the legislative agenda is clearly
controlled by government (MacCarthaigh, 2005, p 115; see also Chapter Seven,
this volume). Only rarely would a PMB, or amendment to a government law,
be accepted, and usually with major revisions by departmental legal drafters, at
the request of the relevant minister. The 2016 reforms were intended to shift this
balance, giving TDs a new potential to enhance their role as legislators.
The 2016 Dáil reforms led to the creation of a Business Committee, meeting
weekly to consider the allocation of time to the business of the Dáil. In its weekly
report, the Business Committee sets out arrangements for dealing with items
of business, including speaking times, taking legislation in the Dáil and Select
Committees, and sitting times and adjournments, as well as the selection of
business for Thursday afternoons, such as PMBs or committee reports. Essentially,
without the power to guillotine debates, the government would require the
support of the Dáil to pass its legislation.
Although intended to invigorate and empower TDs in their legislative function,
the reality has been less ground-breaking. As dozens of new Bills began passing
the second stage, the government soon learned that instead of feebly opposing a
Bill, it was easier to acquiesce and wave it through, leaving it in legislative limbo
at the committee stage. Bills are at best delayed, but sometimes deadened, first,
by the reluctance of government departments to cede power, over the drafting
and content of laws, to the Oireachtas, and second, by constitutional provisions
regarding government control of finances. Article 17.2 of the Constitution
provides that any proposed cost to the exchequer in a Bill must be approved,
in advance, by government before the Bill can proceed. Notwithstanding the
apparent powers to the Dáil, legislation still requires government endorsement
to pass. In this context, it is hard to argue that PMBs reflect the triumph of the
legislature over the executive in the provision of policy, since in reality they are
impossible to pass without the support of government parties and backbenchers.
194
Figure 13.2: Legislative activity of Dáil Eireann, 2004–18

160 Bills proposed
140 Bills enacted
120
100
80
60
40
20
0
4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
200 200 200 200 200 200 201 201 201 201 201 201 201 201 201
Source: Compiled using Houses of the Oireachtas open data application programming interfaces
As Figure 13.2 illustrates, although there has been a dramatic increase in the
number of PMBs presented to the Dáil since 2011, the amount of legislation
passed by the Dáil has remained virtually unchanged. In 2018, five PMBs were
passed into law, while 100 more languished in committee stage. This is usually
because of the government’s use of Article 17.2. For example, a Bill proposed
by Labour Party leader Brendan Howlin TD outlawing online harassment was
blocked on the grounds that it could give rise to additional administrative costs
for the gardaí (police) if they have to investigate a new type of crime (Irish
Examiner, 2018). The use of this procedure means that despite the recent capacity
of the Dáil to set its own agenda, government still has an effective veto on the
progression of legislation.
This is not to say that there have been no changes. The post-2011 Dáil reforms
did succeed in providing more time to debate PMBs in their first and second
stages. While this might not result in more such Bills being passed the very
fact that they are being debated at length in the Dáil means that parliament has
become a more effective venue for the contestation of policy ideas.
The increase in PMBs since 2011 correlates with increasing political party
fragmentation, suggesting an opportunity to air a broader range of policy
ideas. Still, the fact that these opportunities are often regarded primarily as
vehicles to expose policy issues, rather than an effective means to introduce
legislative change, suggests that they do not provide a platform for qualitatively
increasing policy analysis, as might be expected in the later stages of the passage
of a Bill. The government’s habit of taking the broadest possible view of what
constitutes an unacceptable cost to implement legislation has further supported
this approach to PMBs, and led to the accusation that many PMBs are now
195
used to attract the public’s attention to an issue, rather than to propogate real
policy change.
The result is that even when bright new policy ideas are given space in PMBs,
in their desire to capture the support of the majority, the larger parties tend to
be risk-averse, preferring to follow an established policy consensus, rather than
take a lead on issues of public concern. Still, as Irish governments track record
on abortion demonstrates (see Chapter Twelve, this volume), as soon as popular
support becomes apparent, these same parties are often remarkably quick to adopt
new policy. In 2011, only the Labour Party was in favour of marriage equality.
By 2015, an amendment to the Constitution had been passed with the support
of every party in the Dáil. Policies to tackle climate change and even opposition
to water charges have shown similar trajectories. In all cases, the larger parties
either opposed change or avoided engaging with the issue at all until it was shown
to be electorally significant. This tendency reinforces the influence of smaller
parties and groups, while maintaining the political dominance of larger parties.
Evidence for this idea that Irish governments happily steal popular opposition
policies comes from an analysis of some 20,000 campaign promises made in
57 elections across 12 countries (Thomson et al, 2017). A little over 50% of the
campaign pledges made by Irish governments since 1977 have been fulfilled.
This places Ireland ninth of the 12 countries surveyed, slightly ahead of Bulgaria,
Austria and Italy.
When Thomson and colleagues (2017) looked at the promises made by the
parties that did not get into government, however, they found that in the Irish case
a remarkable number of these, almost 40%, were also implemented. This was the
second highest rate of opposition pledge fulfilment in the study. Only Germany
implements more, though Germany has a much higher rate of government
pledge fulfilment. In other words, for every ten of their own policies that Irish
governments implement, they implement seven of their opponents’ policies.
Policy evaluation
The principal opportunity for political parties to extend their role in terms
of policy evaluation is via Oireachtas committees. With the great exception
of the Dáil Committee of Public Accounts – known commonly as the Public
Accounts Committee (PAC) – political parties have been reticent to expand this
opportunity until very recently (see Chapter Seven, this volume). It was not until
the Fine Gael–Labour coalition of 1982–87 that ‘the first efforts to construct a
meaningful committee system were made’ (O’Halpin, 1998, p 135).
Following pre-election promises, the Fine Gael–Labour government increased
the number of Oireachtas committees from seven to 16. While some of the
impetus for the new committees certainly arose as a consequence of the growing
legislative workload arising with EU membership (MacCarthaigh, 2005,
p 138), the sheer variety of topics covered – including women’s rights, marriage
breakdown, small businesses, cooperation with developing countries, the Irish
196
language and vandalism – is suggestive of both inter- and intra-party pressures

(Chubb, 1992, p 203). Despite this, however, in 1987 the returning Fianna Fáil
government did not re-establish them, limiting its creation of new committees
to only three (women’s rights, the Irish language and commercial state-sponsored
bodies). Chubb (1992, p 203) argues that:
A combination of Fianna Fáil’s traditional lack of enthusiasm for

intrusive committees; the failure of the Dáil to debate more than a
few of the reports that they had produced; the reluctance of all but a
few of their members to put much effort into them; and the equivocal
attitude of Deputies generally, all combined to spell the end of the
first – flawed – attempt at grafting a comprehensive committee system
on to the procedures of the Oireachtas.
Since 1993, committees have become a permanent feature of the House and
have been credited with several important developments (see the vignette in
Box 13.2) (MacCarthaigh, 2005, pp 139–47). Most notably in 2006, the Supreme
Court upheld the right of an Oireachtas committee set up to inquire into the
conduct of Judge Brian Curtin to investigate all allegations against the judge.
The judge had been acquitted for possession of child pornography when it was
discovered that the warrant under which his computer was seized was out of date
(The Irish Times, 2006a). In consequence, the right of the Oireachtas committee
under Article 35.4.1 of the Constitution and section 39 of the Courts of Justice
Act 1924 to consider the impeachment of a judge for ‘stated misbehaviour’ was
upheld, creating a significant legal precedent for the removal of judges by the
legislature (The Irish Times, 2006b; see also Chapter Seven, this volume).
Box 13.2: Policy evaluation: the constraints to committees
In 1999, PAC – chaired, as is tradition, by a member of the opposition, in this case Jim
Mitchell TD of Fine Gael – conducted 26 days of public hearings into allegations that
major banks had been assisting some customers in evading Deposit Interest Retention
Tax.The inquiry shone a light on widespread financial malpractice and yielded significant
returns to the state in terms of taxes and penalties. Much public praise was heaped on
the PAC and Jim Mitchell was named by The Irish Times as ‘Politician of the Year’.
A few months later in Abbeylara, County Longford, an armed garda shot dead John
Carthy in controversial circumstances. Inquiries into the shooting by the gardaí and
by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation exonerated the officers involved but did
little to alleviate public concerns. The Oireachtas Committee on Justice, Equality and
Women’s Affairs began its own inquiry. Thirty-six individual members of the gardaí
challenged the right of the committee to call them to appear before it. This challenge
was upheld in the High Court and on appeal to the Supreme Court where it was found
197
that Oireachtas committees have no right in law to make findings of fact against named
individuals.
In 2011, the newly elected Fine Gael–Labour government attempted to amend the
Constitution to restore such powers of investigation to Oireachtas committees. The
proposed amendment was voted down by the public.
In 2014, the PAC, now chaired by Fianna Fáil TD, John McGuinness, held hearings
on the use of public money by the Rehab Group. The group’s chief executive officer
(CEO), Angela Kerins, appeared before the committee and was questioned about her
salary among other matters. She resigned as CEO shortly after citing the impact of the
investigation on Rehab and on her personally. In 2016, she took a High Court case arguing
that the PAC had exceeded its remit. The High Court found that it had no jurisdiction
in this matter. The Supreme Court, on appeal, disagreed and in a preliminary judgment
in February 2019 found that the courts could find the actions of the PAC unlawful if
either the committee itself or any individual members had acted outside their terms of
reference. In the final judgment delivered on 29 May 2019, the Supreme Court found
in favour of Ms Kerins. The PAC did act unlawfully in subjecting her to questioning
outside the terms of reference of the inquiry. The way is now open for Ms Kerins to
seek damages from the state.
The 2016 Dáil reforms, together with the proliferation of smaller parties, technical
groups and independents, has meant that Dáil committees now potentially offer a
platform to interrogate government action more publicly. Indeed, more recently
it has become a common occurrence for the work of Dáil committees to make
political headway. This was certainly the case when, during the 2018 presidential
election, the PAC announced its decision to investigate presidential expenditure
(Morgan, 2018). Still, however, Dáil committees have tended to act as vehicles
to highlight individual TD performances and the credit – or otherwise – has been
linked only indirectly to the political parties to which they belong.
Conclusion: what’s new about ‘new politics’?

Since 1977, no political party has won a majority in an election to Dáil Éireann
and no single party government has held power since 1989. Even before these
dates, minority governments and consensus-based politics were a necessary feature
of Irish politics. The last Cumman na nGaedhal government (1927–32) was
supported from the opposition benches by the Farmers’ Party and independents,
while the formation of the first Fianna Fáil-led administration (1932–33) was
facilitated, from opposition, by the Labour Party. The general election of early
February 2020 resulted in the formation of a collation government comprising
Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Green Party in late June following months
of negotiations. The participation of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael in the same
198
government was seen by many as signifying the end of civil war politics almost
a century after that conflict took place.
Thirty-one general elections have been held since independence. In only
five of these have voters given a single party a majority of seats. Multi-party
coalitions and minority governments reliant on support from opposition parties
or independents in the Dáil have held power for more than 70 of the 97 years
since the foundation of the state.
The idea that political dynamics have changed massively since the financial
crisis and the collapse of support for Fianna Fáil directly after it is perhaps a
misleading one. The ‘confidence and supply’ arrangement, whereby Fianna
Fáil provides support to the minority Fine Gael and independent government
elected in 2016 is not unique. The same situation occurred in reverse, in the so-
called Tallaght strategy of 1987–89, when the main opposition party, Fine Gael,
supported a minority Fianna Fáil government in getting its legislative agenda
through the Dáil.
This lack of single-party majoritarianism has gone hand in hand with a
remarkably stable party system. In every single general election from 1932 to
2007, Fianna Fáil won the largest number of seats and Fine Gael the second
largest, with Labour generally taking third place. What is new about new
politics, then, is the defenestration of Fianna Fáil and the consequent reordering
of political parties, technical groups and independents. In all else, however, the
operation of political parties in the policy process is much as it ever was.
This combination of the long-term dominance of electoral politics by Fianna
Fáil and the ongoing need for Fianna Fáil – and less frequently Fine Gael –
to seek support from other parties, independents and even the opposition, is
that Irish politics developed in an essentially consensual manner. Fianna Fáil
traditionally competed in elections as a catch-all party of the nation, seeking
to represent all sections of society. The emphasis was placed on stability and
capability rather than ideology and, as this chapter demonstrates, this approach
has included a strong willingness to adopt the policy positions of their opponents
when they proved popular with the public.
Viewed in this light, it was the use of a government majority at the behest of
the EU Troika1 to force through controversial measures such as the local property
tax and water charges – without first seeking and attaining broad public consensus
for these measures – which can be seen as an anomaly in Irish political practice, a
factor that goes someway to explain the extent of the public protests engendered
by these moves and the recalibration to more usual politicking thereafter.
Note
1 Trioka refers to the European Commission, the European Central Bank (ECB) and the
International Monetary Fund (IMF) that together provided a three year financial aid programme
to Ireland, starting in 2010. The aid was conditional on austerity measures being imposed on
Irish society so as to reduce government expenditure.
199
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FOURTEEN
Gender expertise and policy analysis

Pauline Cullen
Introduction
Phillips (2007, p 505) defines policy capacity as ‘the ability to provide policy
analysis and advice, participate effectively and exert influence in policy
development’. Gendering policy analysis requires capacity to have sufficient
expertise to apply gender as a variable in the different processes that combine
to generate policy analysis, including research and knowledge production.
Gender expertise features as a component of policy analysis at different levels
of governance and is used to inform and legitimate decisions of corporations,
local, regional and national governments, intergovernmental organisations, and
non-governmental organisations (NGOs) (Kunz et al, 2019). The individuals
and institutions that offer gender expertise vary, as do the activities performed
by them. Academics, private consultancy firms, NGOs, women’s policy agencies
and bureaucrats provide gender expertise through activities such as gender audits,
gender budgeting, research and analysis, gender consultation, gender training
and gender assessments. While the number of organisations both seeking and
providing expertise seems to have increased, the question of what constitutes
gender expertise remains open to debate (Hoard, 2015, p 22). This chapter
seeks to answer that and other questions. How is gender expertise understood
and operationalised in Irish policy? How has it featured in Irish public policy
analysis and to what effect? In conceptual terms, the aim is to characterise gender
expertise in terms of its content, objectives and practice, and understand common
factors that lead to the advice and recommendations of gender experts being
incorporated into public policy.
The United Nations (UN), the World Bank and the International Labour
Organization, alongside the European Union (EU), are but a few of the most
prominent contexts where such gender expertise on issues including gender
and violent conflict, gender and labour market participation, gender and health
outcomes and gender and education proliferate. As Kunz and Prügl (2019, p 4) in
their account of the state of gender expertise observe, ‘the salience given to gender
equality in international policymaking, including most recently the sustainable
development goals (SDGs), has raised new demands for gender expertise in areas
ranging from health and education, to clean water and climate change’.
Gender expertise is a form of knowledge that has a material, social and
discursive impact (Verloo and Lombardo, 2007; Bacchi, 2009) and that operates
203
within relations and networks of actors across time and space with powerful
effects.1 While feminist analysis has been key to gendering the study of expertise,
more recently, intersectional perspectives have gained prominence (Azocar and
Ferree, 2016).
A focus on gender expertise allows us to ask questions about the barriers to
the successful application of gender equality policies, as well as the mechanisms
through which gender inequality is maintained in practice (Cavaghan, 2017).
In this context, norms and values regarding the perception of evidence come
together to influence the way gender can be perceived and practised and how
it is understood in policy analysis. This framework is applied to an assessment
of gender expertise evident in specific policy areas in Ireland. This chapter first
reviews literature that has reflected on what gender expertise is, whom gender
experts are, how gender expertise is organised and what its potential and limits
are (Hoard, 2015; Bustelo et al, 2016; Kunz et al, 2019). Then follows a brief
overview of its influence in analysis of policies to combat violence against women
(VAW). Gender budgeting (GB) is then detailed as a case study to explore how
gender expertise is constrained within institutions, networks and policies, and
how it produces multiple and sometimes unintended outcomes with political
effects (Kunz et al, 2019, p 23).
What is gender expertise?

What constitutes gender expertise and who gets to make the claim to be a gender
expert is highly contested (Ferguson, 2015). Kunz and Prügl (2019, pp 7–8)
suggest that the understanding of gender expertise is affected by the source and
type of knowledge that constitutes gender expertise; the objectives of gender
expertise and its relationship with feminism; and the recognition of expertise and
the broader context of gender expertise work.
Specialist knowledge about gender relations and the packaging of this
knowledge as expertise is largely attributed to work of the feminist movement
in the 20th century (Kunz and Prügl, 2019, p 4). The intent, although contested,
of gender expertise is in part to transfer feminist and gender theory into policy
analysis and making. However, feminist knowledge is also often positioned as
‘non-knowledge’ that can be ignored or obscured in organisational contexts in
what has been termed strategic ignorance (McGoey, 2012). Knowledge produced
by women, feminist and gender scholars is at the same time ‘gendered expertise’,
understood in material and embodied ways as feminine, flawed or partial (Pereira,
2017) or ideological and therefore without merit. As such, gender expertise and
gender experts are not always successful in influencing policy making.
Depending on the audience, gender expert work and knowledge can be
characterised as incisive feminist critique, or alternatively feminist ideas that are
used by the state or market actors to support their agendas that may undermine
gender equality (Griffin, 2015; Fraser, 2016). Either way, these forms of
knowledge shape how the meaning of gender equality may be understood and
204
advanced or resisted (Cullen et al, 2019). Despite contests over who gender
experts are and what gender expertise is, research tells us how such work and
knowledge have been managed in ways that create important policy changes and
deliver on gender equality goals (Ferguson, 2019).
In this chapter, gender expertise is linked to policy expertise, where analyses
indicate that the effects and objectives of gender expertise (whether feminist or
not) are varied and sometimes contradictory. Policy changes can be an outcome
of gender expertise, and even the fundamental reframing of social problems
(Verloo and Lombardo, 2007), but gender expertise may also underline forms
of gender essentialism and be implicated in forms of social control that result in
exclusion and discrimination. Whatever the outcome, gender expertise makes its
way into policy when it has received recognition and validation. This is a process
that occurs within a network of actors and interests, where gender expertise is
performed, negotiated and enacted (Dersnah, 2019; Kunz et al, 2019).
Who are gender experts?

The development of gender expertise is accompanied by the emergence of a
group known as ‘gender experts’ who define a body of knowledge and establish
a profession as they market their ideas to governments, businesses, civil society
and international organisations (Ferguson, 2019). Their aims are to insert
gender considerations into various issues and policy analysis and/or transform
organisational practices. Gender experts have been defined as ‘bureaucrats’ and
‘femocrats’ in feminist triangles of cooperation and influence (Woodward, 2004).
The policy terrain of gender expertise and analysis is populated by academics,
private consultants, gender trainers and public sector employees. The generation
of new knowledge, implementation of gender mainstreaming, training and/or
‘gender-sensitive projects’ all feature as elements of the work of gender experts.
Gender experts face many pressures to affirm feminist principles in their work
and or align with the institutions and organisations that hire them and may have
other agendas (Bustelo et al, 2016).
Gender expertise and knowledge about gender

Gender expertise may mark the professionalisation of feminist knowledge
when the intent to achieve deep structural changes end up as box-ticking,
mapping and scoping exercises that are apolitical, technical and managerial
(Marx, 2018). Gender mainstreaming in particular has been critiqued for how
it can be a superficial administrative exercise that tends to ‘evaporate’ within
institutional contexts (McGauran, 2005; Newman, 2013). Feminists and women’s
organisations that provide gender expertise to, or legitimate that produced for, the
state by gender experts can find their goals displaced by other agendas, including
state commitments to economic liberalism and of austerity (O’Dwyer, 2018).
While gender expertise was sought as a way of solving the governance deficits
205
of the post-2008 economic crisis, with a push for more women in economic
decision making (Hozić and True, 2016), in reality austerity was dependent on
the absorption of unpaid care work by women and social disinvestment more
broadly (in cutting public spending), which has had significant and deleterious
gendered effects (Kantola and Lombardo, 2017). As such, the application of a
specific kind of gender expertise in the absence of a systematic gendered analysis
of policies aimed at economic ‘reform’ has delivered deeply gendered unequal
outcomes for women, particularly migrants and minority ethnic groups, and
those who are poor (Emejulu and Bassel, 2017).
These developments are also linked to long-term moves in new public
management as applied to policy analysis that view the community sector,
including women’s organisations, as sources of policy evidence and expertise (on
policy evidence, see Chapter Five, this volume). The search for expert knowledge,
including forms of gender expertise, that fits with market logics may be at the
expense of community knowledge, and may privilege larger organisations or
eclipse the advocacy role of civil society more broadly (Harvey, 2014; Milbourne
and Murray, 2017) (see Chapter Twelve, this volume).
The deprioritisation of gender equality as a policy goal, justified in part by
the post-2008 economic crisis (Karamessini and Rubery, 2014; Jacquot, 2017)
and now assumed solvable by ‘recovery’ also raises issues for the role of gender
expertise in policy analysis. Social conservatism, neoliberalism and nationalism
(Elomäki and Kantola, 2018), as well as populist right-wing social and political
formations (Verloo, 2018) that oppose greater gender equality, may be read as
an indication of the perceived success of gender expertise (Kunz et al, 2019).
However, it also complicates how gender experts and gender expertise is viewed,
where and in what form it is deployed, and to what effect.
The next section outlines the context for gender expertise in policy analysis
in Ireland and then, through case studies of policies to combat VAW and GB,
explores the factors that facilitate the policy success of gender expertise and how
best to understand its variable outcomes.
Gender equality and gender expertise in Ireland

Ireland is a highly globalised economic regime with a hybrid welfare system that
combines strong liberal characteristics with conservative and Catholic features and
a strong male breadwinner regime (Murphy and Cullen, 2018a). Gender is coded
in constitutional protections for women in the home, which sit in tension with
the activation of women in labour markets (Devitt, 2016). As a relatively low-
tax economy, Ireland also lacks capacity to fund socially necessary reproductive
and care work, and as a result such work remains feminised in the sphere of the
private household (and even more so since austerity). Social disinvestment in
the wider care infrastructure, exacerbated by forms of permanent austerity, also
leaves women responsible for unpaid care work while many work in low-paid
care work (Murphy and Cullen, 2018a).
206
Despite the introduction in 2016 of a gender quota for national electoral

candidates, Ireland occupies 80th place in the global league of parliamentary
inequality. Women currently make up just 22% of the national parliament and
24% of local elected politicians. The deficit in gender representation combines
with other gendered penalties, such as high-cost childcare and until recently
restrictive access to reproductive rights, to reinforce gender inequality.
While there is at best a weak tradition of state feminism in Ireland, austerity
made possible the eradication of equality infrastructure aimed at gender, poverty
and racial discrimination and its replacement with a broader human rights and
equality body, the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission (IHREC).
A standalone women’s rights parliamentary committee was also subsumed into
the broader ‘equality’ structures, resulting in no specific mandate on gender
equality evident within the parliamentary committee structures or policy
analysis processes. Other bodies, including a Women’s Health Council, were
also closed during austerity, further narrowing the options for the production
of gender expertise and the opportunity for gendered policy analysis (Harvey,
2014; Murphy and Cullen, 2018a). Civil society groups including women’s
organisations experienced austerity-era cuts in funding (in the order of 40%),
which means that the overall gender equality architecture is under-resourced.
Women’s organisations have weak capacity to analyse policy and to produce
gender expertise, reliant often on external academic or international think
tanks, or transnational networks of gender experts. However, the state does
procure gender expertise from civil society, including women’s groups, to inform
‘evidence-based’ policy. Such funding has helped organisations survive funding
cuts, but also ties them to state or market policy agendas with consequences for
the forms of gender expertise produced (Cullen and Murphy, 2016).
Mirroring developments at EU level on gender equality, national state action
plans on gender equality have been downgraded to the status of strategies that lack
targets and timelines (Murphy and Cullen, 2018a). Public policy making overall
lacks any systematic gender proofing or gendered analysis, outside of episodic
efforts of women’s organisations during pre-budget periods, one-off topical reports
and more recent efforts to promote gender budgeting (see Case study 1) (Murphy
and Cullen, 2018a, 2018b). Other social justice think tanks do provide research
and expertise on low pay, poverty and tax justice (SJI, 2019) that can support
gendered policy analysis. Analysis of child poverty, lone parents’ access to the
labour market (SSVP, 2019) and family homelessness (Mayock and Bretherton,
2017), alongside reports on the gender pay gap (Doorley, 2018), pensions (SJI,
2018) and care and unpaid labour (Russell et al, 2019), feature elements of gender
expertise. While some of these analyses offer valuable and otherwise largely absent
gender disaggregated data, they seldom make explicit the gendered dynamics of
the issue and are either viewed within a human rights or social justice charity
framework, or from the perspective of ‘objective’ think tank analysis.
In the absence of national gender expertise and adequate data (on policy evidence,
see Chapter Five, this volume), international data, including analysis from the EU
207
Country Specific Recommendations, the European Institute for Gender Equality

(EIGE) and UN Convention Against the Elimination of Discrimination Against
Women (CEDAW) processes, are used by women’s organisations to highlight
gender equality issues. State and corporate projects to deal with gender inequality,
in higher education (HEA, 2016), corporations (Government of Ireland, 2019)
and cultural industries (Donohue et al, 2017), have also emerged, although most
involve mapping, scoping and measuring female under-representation. These
initiatives and their associated forms of gender expertise are often a product of EU
initiatives and/or a response to more proximate domestic feminist activism, usually
over decades. Issues tend to gain traction in policy circles when ignited by public
scandal or populist, single-issue framing that gains the support of elites in forms
of politically motivated opportunism (Cullen and Murphy, 2016). The forms
of gender expertise produced by these exercises can include statistical evidence
and or survey data to establish the existence of gender inequality but may rely
on media-friendly soundbites and personal ‘story telling’ to gain resonance. The
development of a statistical evidence base is significant, especially in the absence
of gender disaggregated data in Ireland. However, it can also underemphasise the
power dimension of gender struggles and or leave prevailing gender constructs
untouched (Hoskyns and Rai, 2007) or the circumstances of marginalised women
unaddressed (O’Keefe and Courtois, 2019).
Case study 1: Gender expertise and VAW

A clear example of policy success for gender policy analysis and expertise lie in
the areas of policies to combat domestic violence (DV) and VAW. Generating
analysis and evidence for policy change is difficult in VAW as definitions of
violence vary across jurisdictions, crimes are under-reported to agencies and
increases in reporting are often indicators of improved services, all factors that
may complicate policy responses (Walby et al, 2017). Data on VAW and DV is
particularly poor in Ireland (see Chapter Five, this volume). The Irish Census
uses official data on crime from police and judicial authorities under reservation
(Lally, 2018) and comparative gender expertise in the area indicates Ireland
as having very low levels of reporting and conviction, and limited access to
supports and services for victims (FRA, 2014; EIGE, 2018). A national survey
in 2002 on sexual abuse and violence (known as the SAVI report) (McGee et al,
2002) had revealed significant issues. Although an update is planned, advocates
have raised issues about the timeline and a lack of focus on the experiences
of marginal groups (O’Doherty, 2018). Poor data inhibits policy makers from
understanding the nature and scale of the issue and undermines the capacity of
gender experts and women’s organisations to contribute to policy analysis. In
Ireland, an Observatory on Violence against Women, a consortium of women’s
organisations, had for decades drawn on international comparative statistical
evidence from the EIGE, UN CEDAW and the EU Agency for Fundamental
Rights to call for better data collection (NWCI, 2019).
208
The state had failed to modernise its approach to VAW and also delayed
ratifying the main international protocol on the issue known as the Istanbul
Convention, widely adopted across the EU.2 Austerity-related public funding
cuts added to a stagnant policy context with incremental shifts at best, leaving
advocacy and service organisations unable to improve low levels of reporting of
sexual violence and deficits in refuge spaces. A coincidence of events, including
a widely publicised incident of familial homicide in 2016 and a controversial rape
trial in Northern Ireland in 2018, alongside the death of a police officer in a DV-
related incident, revealed problems with deficits in training and legal protections
that created public support for legal and policy change. The implications of
the global MeToo movement also resonated in the Irish context (Cullen and
Corcoran, 2020).
These developments created a political opportunity, allowing gender experts to
re-emphasise international statistical and survey data3 that illustrated Ireland’s poor
record. Alongside this, gender expertise in the form of testimony of individual
women victims featured in media and political debates helped to politicise the
issue and gain the support of female politicians and bureaucrats. The result was
a series of policy responses that strengthened legal protections for victims of
violence, widened the definition of sexual violence/abuse, and marked the
introduction of new administrative units and gender training in the criminal
justice/policing services.4 On 1 July 2019, the Istanbul Convention came into
force in Ireland, providing additional opportunities to hold the state responsible
for improving data collection to develop the gender expertise required for policy
analysis and development. However, aside from modernising legal protections,
public awareness campaigns are the most prevalent policy response, alongside
a commitment to generate better data, while refuges and services for victims
remain underfunded.
This example of gendered policy change reveals the politics of gender expertise
and the factors that create the impetus for policy success. A constellation of
factors are required, including political opportunities, elite support and the
mobilisation of critical actors, often feminist activists and bureaucrats, working
together to insert gender expertise into diverse policy analysis contexts. In the
case outlined here, different forms of gender expertise are part of the process,
including statistical evidence, often international and comparative, as well as
personal testimony and victim-centred narratives.
Case study 2: Gender expertise and GB

GB provides an example of a significant advance in policy analysis success in the
area of gender expertise, and is endorsed by international bodies including the
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) (Downes
et al, 2016), the International Monetary Fund (Quinn, 2017) and the European
Commission (O’Hagan, 2019). Yet, it is also one that has elicited resistance
and/or has been undermined by overly technocratic approaches to such analysis
209
(Marx, 2018). GB has a radical and transformative potential as it draws on feminist

political economic expertise to challenge and directly engage technical (macro)
economic policy and by extension masculine assumptions underpinning most
economic policy making (O’Hagan, 2019). GB aims to correct models of the
economy that have largely excluded social reproduction including unpaid care
work, and acts as a policy response to women’s unequal economic status (Folbre,
2009). It can be defined as ‘integrating a clear gender perspective within the
overall context of the budgetary process, through the use of special processes and
analytical tools, with a view to promoting gender-responsive policies’ (Downes
et al, 2016, p 6).
GB represents expertise aimed at the disaggregation of statistics, including
intersectional variables such as sex and gender, race and ethnicity, disability,
time use, class and socioeconomic status and paid and unpaid labour, to inform
budgetary policy, along with impact analysis that focuses on (differently situated)
individuals and households, rather than aggregates (O’Hagan, 2017, p 21).
Gender analysis of the policy and resource allocation process in the budget
means examining how budgetary allocations affect the economic and social
opportunities of women and men, and restructuring revenue and spending
decisions to eliminate unequal gendered outcomes (O’Hagan, 2017, pp 19–20).
Assessments of where gender budgeting has most influence in policy analysis
confirm the importance of the decision-making ‘venue’ and engagement with
the core executive as essential to advancing these forms of gender expertise
(O’Hagan and Klatzer, 2018). In similar terms to other forms of gender expertise,
this requires critical actors, including feminists, inside and outside the state to
make use of political opportunities to ensure that GB becomes institutionalised
as a norm of budgetary processes (O’Hagan, 2019). The Irish case illustrates the
potential and limits of gender expertise as GB to influence policy analysis.
Equality and gender budgeting in Ireland

Ireland was once a leader in policy proofing as a form of policy analysis, as a
function of its involvement with EU anti-poverty programmes. Ireland has also,
under EU institutional requirements, considerable experience in gender impact
assessment. A Gender Equality Unit in the Department of Justice and Equality
introduced gender impact assessment guidelines for the National Development
Plan 2000–06, and an Equality Proofing Working Group of the Department
of Justice and Equality was driven by the Equality Authority over the period
2000–08. Some progress was found to have been made on mainstreaming gender
under the National Development Plan, although this was uneven (McGauran,
2005). This initiative collapsed with the closure of the Gender Equality Unit and
the diminution of the Equality Authority over the period 2009–10 (Murphy,
2017a, p 6).
Ireland has had less experience of GB (Murphy, 2017a). Despite this absence
of statutory GB processes, academic feminists have analysed the gendered
210
implications of austerity budgets and policy responses to crisis (Barry and

Conroy, 2013). Prompted by Barry and Conroy’s (2013) extensive gendered
and feminist analysis of austerity, the Irish Feminist Network, a group of young
feminist activists established in 2011, led a broad-based initiative known as the
Equality Budgeting Campaign (EBC) in 2013 to promote equality proofing
(Fischer, 2014).
By 2016, parallel efforts to campaign for budget proofing were advanced by
state and academic feminist actors, in their work to promote a form of GB. Policy
entrepreneurship by feminist academics in the IHREC working alongside feminist
politicians placed the issue on the political agenda and secured a commitment
to advance gender and other forms of budgeting in the 2016 Programme for
Government. In 2016, the IHREC subsequently funded the National Women’s
Council of Ireland (NWCI) to develop tools to advance GB (see Chapter Twelve,
this volume). In 2017, the NWCI, the Department of Public Expenditure and
Reform and IHREC worked to develop a model of gender and equality proofing
to be piloted in five government departments in 2017. The 2016 commitment
in the Programme for Government to advance GB was also evident in a 2018
budgetary commitment to resource workshops, training sessions, policy papers
and briefing documents supportive of gender budgeting policy and practice
(PBO, 2018).
These developments marked the first indication of some traction for a form of
feminist political economic analysis of austerity and a firmer footing for this form
of gender expertise. However, once these processes became the responsibility
of state officials, and priorities shifted within the sponsoring body, the IHREC,
GB began to decline as a policy goal. Initial assessments suggest that GB is now
subject to the bureaucratic logics and timeline of state officials and is weakly
institutionalised in the structures of the Parliamentary Budget Office and
Parliamentary Budget Scrutiny Committees (Murphy, 2017b; PBO, 2018). As
such, policy entrepreneurship of state feminist actors risks becoming marginalised
and, in the absence of external feminist pressure, and the lack of topicality of the
issue, ambivalence around its adoption within the state policy-making apparatus
may emerge. In effect, gender expertise has yet to demonstrate a secure footing
in economic and budgetary policy (Murphy and Cullen, 2018a). Once GB
became the responsibility of state officials, it became open to depoliticisation, as
political demands are translated into matters for technocratic management (Marx,
2018). Equality budgeting has resurfaced, albeit in the form of international
oversight by bodies such as the OECD. The NWCI, a body with weak feminist
political economic expertise, has now become the sole feminist presence in policy
implementation, while the EBC has now been disbanded (EBC, 2013).
The Irish GB case illustrates how state feminist actors who aim to disseminate
gender expertise are strongly influenced by the moderating dynamics of the
policy cycle. As feminist actors engage with the state, the form of expertise shifts
from more a radical transformative footing to a state-led response where remedies
and action are vulnerable to dilution.
211
Conclusion
Thinking about what gender policy analysis and expertise allows us to make
visible draws attention to the types of knowledge that qualify as expertise, the
conditions under which such knowledge has resonance with policy makers and
can claim policy success. The tying together of feminist knowledge with gender
expertise raises issues about whether all knowledge and interventions labelled as
such have feminist intent. Gender expertise and gender experts are critiqued for
professionalising, technicalising and depoliticising feminist knowledge, reducing
the struggle for gender equality to checklists, gender-training tool kits or the
‘gender washing’ of documents (Kunz and Prügl, 2019, p 6). However, research
shows that gender expertise has enabled the gendering of policy making and has
delivered tangible gains for gender equality (Ferguson, 2019). The Irish cases
explored here identify the challenges and resistances that gender policy analysis
processes face when entering policy-making environments. For VAW and DV
policy, technical gender expertise alongside experiential knowledge were used
as catalysts to ignite the policy change for which feminist civil society had long
campaigned. GB, an innovative and potentially transformative form of gender
expertise, illustrates the varieties and complexities of gender expertise (Kunz et al,
2019), yet also how this form of knowledge offers an important pluralisation
of expertise input at the heart of economic policy making and public policy
analysis. Resistance to adopting GB as a norm of policy analysis indicates how
inhospitable some contexts remain to gender expertise and the complex power
relations involved in gender-expert work (O’Hagan and Klatzer, 2018). These
examples show how gender expertise can play a strategic role in policy analysis
and in creating policy change, and how gender expertise is one of the common
factors that may be required to facilitate policy influence. The examples also
reveal the ways in which resistances can limit gender expertise to scoping and
evidential outcomes that may promote change, but at best in the long term.
Notes
1 Feminist perspectives focus on how policy actors interpret their roles and contexts, frame
problems, and pursue options, and how their work is embedded in social practices that are
relational and articulated in systems of governance (Bacchi, 2009).
2 The Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women
and domestic violence (the Istanbul Convention) has requirements for data collection, gender-
sensitive approaches to immigration and legislative frameworks on gender violence.
3 International comparative survey data report that Ireland has the highest level of claimed sexual
harassment in Europe, with 32% of Irish women between the ages of 18 and 34 saying they
had experienced some form of sexual harassment in the past 12 months: www.justice.ie/en/
JELR/Pages/PR19000131
4 These include the Second National Strategy on Domestic, Sexual and Gender-based Violence
2016–2021, and the enactment of the Domestic Violence Act 2018, the Criminal Justice (Sexual
Offences) Act 2017 and the Criminal Justice (Victims of Crime) Act 2017.
212
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in Europe, Budapest/New York, NY: CEU Press, pp 21–49.
Walby, S., Towers, J., Balderston, S., Corradi, C., Francis, B., Heiskanen, M.,
Helweg-Larsen, K., Mergaert, L., Olive, P., Palmer, E., Stöckl, H. and Strid, S.
(2017) The Concept and Measurement of Violence against Women and Men, Bristol:
Policy Press.
Woodward, A.E. (2004) ‘Building velvet triangles: gender and informal
governance’, in T. Christiansen and S. Piattoni (eds) Informal Governance in the
European Union, Cheltenham and Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar, pp 76–93.
216
Part Four
The public, science and the
media: the wider policy analysis
environment in Ireland
217
FIFTEEN
Democratic innovations and policy

analysis: climate policy and Ireland’s
Citizens’ Assembly (2016–18)
Clodagh Harris
Introduction
In the past decade, Ireland has emerged as a world leader in deliberative
democracy as evidenced by its Constitutional Convention (CC) (2012–14) and
Citizens’ Assembly (CA) (2016–18).
Complementing existing representative institutions and processes, these
deliberative democratic innovations have placed citizens at the heart of
constitutional change and political reform. Providing opportunities for wider
and deeper citizen engagement in the democratic process, they offer citizens the
chance to have a role in policy making and policy analysis beyond the ‘ballot
box’. Arguably, this is all the more important at a time of rising democratic
malaise, in Ireland and elsewhere, characterised by declining levels of trust in
politicians and in traditional forms of political engagement (Elstub and Escobar,
2019; Farrell and Suiter, 2019). The emergence of these initiatives in the 2010s
was part of a wider governmental response to the profound crises both in global
capitalism and in Ireland’s national economic and social situation that strained the
relationship between government and the people. These crises acted as a catalyst
for Ireland’s new approach to constitutional and political reform, and latterly
policy reform (Harris et al, 2013; Farrell and Suiter, 2019). More recently, these
government-led initiatives have also started to address policy areas, for example
how to respond to climate change and to the challenges and opportunities of an
ageing population.
This chapter critically evaluates the potential of these deliberative forums (also
known as mini-publics) as an innovative method of policy analysis. It focuses on
a particular case – the contribution Ireland’s first CA has made to climate policy.
The chapter starts with a brief conceptual description of democratic innovations
and policy analysis. It then offers an overview of Ireland’s CA (practice and
processes) and its link to the wider democratic system. Particular attention is paid
to its contribution to climate policy. Finally, the chapter critically assesses the use
of Citizens’ Assemblies as a method of policy analysis.
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Democratic innovations and policy analysis

We have witnessed a proliferation of global innovations to reimagine democracy
by re-engaging citizens in decisions on matters that affect their daily lives. These
innovations can be found at various levels of government across a range of issues
and with varying degrees of success. They are drawn from representative, direct,
participatory and deliberative understandings of democratic theory. Electoral system
reform and the extension of the franchise are but two examples of representative
innovations. Others, such as direct initiatives, participatory budgeting and CAs,
endeavour to engage citizens more directly in political processes, either by
widening and/or deepening participation, and are drawn from theories of direct,
participatory and deliberative democracy respectively (Harris, 2019).
Elstub and Escobar (2019) provide conceptual clarity and emphasise ‘deeper’
as opposed to ‘wider’ citizen participation. For them, ‘democratic innovations
are processes or institutions, that are new to a policy issue, policy role, or level
of governance, and developed to reimagine and deepen the roles of citizens in
governance processes by increasing opportunities for participation, deliberation
and influence’ (2019, p 15).
Ireland’s CC and CA were exercises in deliberative democracy. Unlike
representative or ‘aggregate’ forms of democracy, deliberative democracy focuses
not on individual knowledge and preferences but on ‘civility and argumentative
complexity’ (Dryzek et al, 2019, p 1144). Inclusive participation, reason giving,
reflection, respect and openness to persuasion are all emphasised in deliberative
democratic processes.
CAs, citizens’ juries, consensus conferences, planning cells and so on, often
referred to in the literature as mini-publics, are all examples of deliberative
democratic innovations. They involve random selection of participants to ensure
diversity and representativeness as well as professional facilitation and ‘civility
norms’, such as respectful, reasoned argument. They have been defined as:
… a democratic innovation, in which a sub group of citizens

(some of whom may be randomly or quasi-randomly selected)
engage with experts, witnesses, advocates, stakeholders, and one
another, in facilitated informed deliberations on a given matter, and
publicly present their opinions and/or recommendations to their
commissioning body and wider society. (Harris, 2019, p 47)
It is broadly accepted that the goals of deliberation cannot be met in any one
institution (Mansbridge et al, 2012). Mini-publics, albeit primarily deliberative,
do not operate in a vacuum and to the exclusion of participatory, representative
and direct democratic processes. The systemic turn in deliberative democratic
theory recognises that deliberation can occur in multiple locations, such as
parliament, the media (old and new), social movements, and civil society forums,
and involve a diversity of actors.
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With this systemic approach in mind, this chapter turns its attention to
the potential of mini-publics to enhance inclusion, expertise, transparency
and participation within policy analysis. Acknowledging, that the goal of
policy analysis is to ‘improve policy outcomes by applying systematic analytic
methodologies to policy problems’ (Howlett and Lindquist, 2004, p 225),
particular focus is paid to its success in meeting the democratic principles of
evidence based, transparent and accountable decisions (Brans et al, 2016) and
deliberative democracy’s virtues of inclusion, justification and reflection (Dryzek,
2016). This section also explores the potential of CAs to provide a systematic
approach to identifying possible policy options, evaluating and comparing them,
selecting the optimal one, and implementing and monitoring it (Howlett and
Ramesh, 2003).
Increasingly citizens are playing a more significant part in policy formation
through a variety of online and face-to-face consultation and other participatory
mechanisms. This is driven both from the ‘bottom up’, as citizens seek more
input to decisions that affect their lives, and from the ‘top down’, as governments
increasingly recognise the democratic benefits of involving stakeholders and the
public in designing and implementing policy (Fung, 2015).
The participatory turn in policy analysis and academic research towards
collaborative co-production and co-decision emphasises inclusion, direct
engagement and empowerment. This is a marked departure from more traditional
forms of public engagement in policy analysis that view public consultation
simply in terms of soliciting people’s views (Aldred, 2009; Mullally et al, 2018).
Recognising that knowledge is socially constructed, that there are multiple
understandings of a phenomenon and that a plurality of knowledge can exist
across multiple spaces and places, participatory approaches are value-based and
informed by a strong social justice ethos that incorporates the principles of
equality, reciprocity,- and respect (Brydon-Miller et al, 2003; Wynne-Jones et al,
2015). This emphasis on justice, particularly social justice, is one way in which
participatory approaches can be ‘a potent means to achieve key democratic
values’ (Fung, 2015, p 513). Simultaneously, we have also witnessed a move
from technocratic, centralised forms of policy analysis to deliberative policy
analysis that recognises modern problems are too complex, contested and fluid
to be handled by experts, stakeholders and central governments alone (Hajer
and Wagenaar, 2003; Fischer and Boossabong, 2018). The use of democratic
innovations to bring more voices, views and information into the policy process
can enhance Government legitimacy and effectiveness.
Elstub and Escobar’s conceptualisation of democratic innovations, includes
‘alternative imaginaries of citizens as co-producers and problem-solvers’ (2019,
p 19). For them, ‘reimagining and deepening the role of citizens in governance
processes’ (p 22) is the ‘ineliminable feature’ of democratic innovations. Well-
designed, multi-sectoral participatory and deliberative democratic innovations
offer new ways of tackling ‘wicked problems’, such as social and environmental
policy challenges (Dryzek, 2010; Fung, 2015). The part played by one such
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democratic innovation in developing climate policy in Ireland is discussed in

the next section.
Deliberative democratic innovations and Ireland’s response to the

climate change crisis
CAs and conventions have become a common feature of the Irish public policy
landscape. The CC established by the then government in response to calls for
wider constitutional and political reform, included 66 randomly selected citizens
(in theory, broadly reflective of wider society in terms of sex, age, geography,
education and socioeconomic status), 33 political representatives (drawn
proportionately from parties across the island of Ireland) and an independent
chairperson (Suiter et al, 2015).
It was tasked with deliberating on a somewhat eclectic array of constitutional
issues ranging from marriage equality to reducing the voting age and from
electoral system reform to the removal of the offence of blasphemy from the
Constitution. The parliamentary resolution that established it also permitted it
to consider ‘any other Amendments’, thereby giving the CC specific agenda-
setting powers.
Its remit included public submissions, brief, accessible ‘expert’ presentations,
‘stake-holder’ panel discussions and personal testimonies, and it also facilitated
small-group deliberations. The CC made recommendations by majority vote at
the end of each meeting and sent a report to the Houses of the Oireachtas to
which the government committed to respond within four months. In all, the
CC made 38 recommendations, of which it is estimated that 18 would require
a referendum. Many of the CC’s recommendations have been or are due to be
implemented, and only eight were rejected. Many of those accepted are still
awaiting a referendum, for example, lowering the voting age, and votes for
those resident outside the state in presidential elections (Farrell, 2018). The CC
is best known for facilitating Ireland’s historic referendum on marriage equality.
On 22 May 2015, Ireland became the first country in the world to support by
popular vote the introduction of marriage equality. It was also the first time a
recommendation from a deliberative mini-public had resulted in constitutional
change. On the same day, a referendum held to reduce the age of presidential
candidates was defeated (73.1% against to 26.9% in favour). A third popular
referendum on the removal of the offense of blasphemy from the Constitution
was successfully passed on 26 October 2018.
One of the CC’s successes has been in carving out a role for deliberative
democratic innovations in the political system, and its legacy is evident in the
CA’s recommendation to repeal the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution,
which was successfully passed by popular referendum on 25 May 2018 (see
Chapter Twelve, this volume). Established by Oireachtas resolution in July 2016,
the CA comprised 99 citizens (recruited a by polling company using stratified
random sampling across four targets, namely sex, age, geography and social class)
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and an independent chairperson. Notwithstanding some differences in terms of

composition (for example, it did not include political representatives), the CA
modelled its work closely on that of its precursor (Farrell et al, 2019). It, too, was
asked to examine a diverse range of issues, including the Eighth Amendment to
the Constitution (concerned with the provision on abortion), how to make the
state a leader in tackling climate change, and how to respond to the challenges and
opportunities of an ageing population, as well as two political reform measures,
namely fixed-terms parliaments and the manner in which referenda are held.
One of the unique and arguably more successful aspects of the CC and CA
processes was the inclusion of civil society and/or advocacy panels. These sessions
recognised multiple forms of knowledge and involved, in some cases, personal
testimonies and stories, giving context as well as the lived experience to the dry,
technical, legal and academic facts and arguments.
Traditionally, CAs have deliberated on constitutional matters; for example, early
CAs in British Columbia (2004), Ontario (2007) and the Netherlands (2006) all
addressed the issue of electoral reform. Traditionally, policy issues have tended to
be addressed by citizens’ juries, the most popular form of deliberative mini-public,
but a new trend has started to emerge internationally. From the end of the 2010s,
the use of CAs has become increasingly diffuse geographically; so too have the
topics they address as they extend into the broader policy space. For its part, the
Irish CA addressed two broad policy issues, namely how to make Ireland a leader
in tackling climate change and how to respond to the challenges and opportunities
of an ageing population. Ireland has blazed a trail here as the first country to use
a CA to tackle the issue of climate change. Others are following suit and CAs on
climate action have been established in the United Kingdom (UK) and France.
This chapter now turns to what the CA contributed to the wider policy
analysis process in the area of climate change. As Little and Torney (2017,
p 194) note, ‘Ireland has been a site of climate policy change, development and
innovation’, yet paradoxically it has also been ‘consistently a climate laggard’
(Torney and O’Gorman, 2019, p 589). Ireland received some recognition for
its Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Act 2015, which led to the
Climate Change Advisory Council , the presentation of an Annual National
Transition Statement by the Minister to the Houses of the Oireachtas (first
made in December 2016), and the 2017 National Mitigation Plan on reducing
greenhouse gas emissions (Little and Torney, 2017). Yet, the Act has come under
criticism for not including targets (Torney, 2017)
The initial draft Oireachtas resolution that established the CA did not include
it as a matter for deliberation. An amendment proposed by the Green Party led
to its inclusion. The resulting call to discuss how to make Ireland a leader in
tackling climate change was quite ambitious. The CA dedicated two weekends
of its deliberations to the matter. The original intention had been to assign
one weekend for this final topic. However as the Chair, Justice Mary Laffoy,
noted:‘Members’ interest in this topic was clearly demonstrated when they
decided back at the January meeting to bring forward our consideration of
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climate change; The Members then decided that they wanted to dedicate a
second weekend to its consideration’ (CA, 2018, p 1).
The first weekend addressed climate science, the impact of climate change and
energy policy. The second weekend considered the transport and agricultural
sectors and developed the CA’s final recommendations. It received 1,205 public
submissions on the topic (1,180 of which were received online). These came
from non-governmental organisations (NGOs), representative groups, advocacy
groups, political parties, commercial entities, academics and individuals. In their
research on the public submissions, Devaney and colleagues (2020a) find that the
majority of the submissions were a call to action (63%), with 69% of the opinion
that the government was responsible for tackling climate change. Very few of the
submissions were sceptical of climate change (3%). The authors also observed that
individuals were more inclined than experts to present climate justice arguments;
experts stressed national policy measures; community engagement was a core
focus for NGOs and other groups; and women were more likely than men to
raise the issue of waste management (Devaney et al, 2020a)
The expertise provided to the CA came from senior officials and/or researchers
from a range of agencies and institutions: the Environmental Protection Agency;
International Energy Agency; UK Met Office; Met Éireann; Institute of
International and European Affairs; Department of Communications, Climate
Action and Environment; National Dialogue on Climate Action; Directorate-
General for Energy (a Directorate-General of the European Commission);
National Transport Authority, Teagasc (Agriculture and Food Development
Authority); and the Edinburgh Centre for Carbon Innovation. Presentations
were also made by the Chair of the Climate Change Advisory Council and
a former European Commissioner for Climate Action. Innovatively, each
of the weekends incorporated a panel on leadership initiatives at a local and
community level. For instance, the first weekend included first-hand experience
of leadership in Ireland in the area of energy, at which there were contributions
from the Tipperary Energy Agency on community windfarms, officers in the
Kilbarrack Fire Station (Ireland’s first-carbon neutral fire station), and energy
agency Codema on home energy-saving kits. The second weekend featured an
agriculture, food and land use panel discussion on leadership that heard from
farmers on the smart farming initiative and from organic farmers. FoodCloud, a
social enterprise redistributing surplus food from the food industry to the charity
sector, also shared its experience (CA, 2018). Contributions were reflected in
some of the final and ancillary recommendations, for example on food waste and
supports for organic farming.
In all, the CA made 13 recommendations (see Table 15.1), ranging from calls
for new governance structures to specific sectoral calls, such as an end to state
subsidies on peat extraction. It also called on the state to prioritise investment
in public transport over new road infrastructure (at a ratio of no less than 2:1),
to introduce a tax on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from agriculture, and to
provide more support for planting forests.
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Table 15.1: The Irish CA’s recommendations on tackling climate change

Number Recommendation
As a matter of urgency a new or existing independent body should be resourced appropriately, and be given a
1
broad range of new functions and powers in legislation to urgently tackle climate change.
The state should take a leadership role in addressing climate change mitigation measures and through adaption
2
measures..
3 The overwhelming majority of members were willing to pay higher taxes on carbon intensive measures.
The state should undertake a comprehensive assessment of the vulnerability of all critical infrastructure with a
4
view to building resilience.
The state should enable through legislation the selling back into the grid of electricity from micro-generation
5
by private citizens.
The state should act to ensure the greatest possible levels of community ownership in all future renewable
6
energy projects.
The state should end all subsidies for peat extraction and instead spend the money on peat bog restoration
7
and making proper provision for the protection of the rights of the workers impacted.
8 The number of bus lanes, cycling lanes and park and ride facilities should be greatly increased.
9 The state should take immediate steps to support the transition to electric vehicles.
10 The state should prioritise the expansion of public transport spending over road infrastructure at a ratio of 2:1.
11 There should be a tax on GHG emissions from agriculture.
The state should introduce a standard form of mandatory measurement and reporting of food waste at every
12
level of food distribution and supply chain.
The state should review and revise supports for land use diversification with attention to supports for planting
13
forests and encouraging farming.
Source: CA (2018)
As Devaney and colleagues (2020b, p 142) observe, ‘the Assembly’s deliberations

on climate change received the highest consensus scores of all topics considered,
with 80% or more citizens voting in favour of each recommendation proposed’.
A number of the recommendations had detailed qualifications attached to them.
For example, the first recommendation regarding the independent body specified
that it should propose ‘ambitious 5 year national and sectoral targets for emissions
reductions to be implemented by the State, with regular review and reporting
cycles’, and have the power ‘to pursue the State in legal proceedings to ensure that
the State lives up to its legal obligations relating to climate change’ (CA, 2018,
p 23). Additionally the CA made four ancillary recommendations that addressed
issues such as packaging, waste reduction and information campaigns, to name
but a few. They were gathered using a reflective exercise form circulated to
members on the final weekend to give them an opportunity to make comments
or suggestions for further recommendation. The ‘consensus themes’ were
included as ancillary recommendations by the Chair in her report (CA, 2018,
pp 19–20).
The CA’s recommendations are ambitious. In keeping with the Oireachtas
resolution that established it, the CA’s report was forwarded to the Joint Oireachtas
Committee on Climate Action (JOCCA). The committee’s deliberations
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took place over seven months and resulted in 42 priority recommendations

and 39 ancillary ones. Its work started with a presentation from the CA Chair,
and it structured its report according to the CA’s recommendations, providing
a considered response to each one. By and large, it supported the CA’s
recommendations, with the exception of its recommendations on introducing
a tax on GHG emissions from agriculture. Nonetheless cross-party consensus
was secured on the bulk of the CA’s recommendations and JOCCA stressed its
intention to ‘elevate climate action to the same level of importance as finance and
budgetary matters’ (Houses of the Oireachtas, 2019b). This priority was captured
in its detailed, radical recommendations around the governance framework,
which included the following:
• replacing the Climate Change Advisory Council with a Climate Action

Council with enhanced functions and resources, including a central advisory
role in setting five-yearly carbon budgets with a requirement for government
to follow its recommendations or publicly account for not doing so;
• establishing a permanent Oireachtas Standing Committee on climate change
as the main forum for holding government departments and public bodies to
account for targets;
• creating a Climate Action Implementation Board with a central coordinating
role for the Department of the Taoiseach. Other government departments
would report to it on the implementation of action plans in its sector.
Described as ‘detailed, ambitious and far-reaching’ (Torney, 2019), the JOCCA

report (Houses of the Oireachtas, 2019a) heavily influenced the cross-government
Climate Action Plan, which was published in June 2019 It was preceded by
the declaration of a climate and biodiversity emergency by Dáil Éireann on
10 May 2019.
In January 2020 (some 20 months after the CA had delivered its final report),
the then Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment,
Richard Burton TD, published the draft General Scheme of the Climate Action
(Amendment) Bill 2019. It reiterated the government’s commitment to make
Ireland net zero by 2050 and echoed the governance and accountability elements
prioritised in the Climate Action Plan, which could in turn be traced back
to the JOCCA and the CA, and set out the legislation required to underpin
the new governance processes on climate action. It included provisions for the
replacement of the Climate Change Advisory Council with a Climate Action
Council that would enjoy extended powers and expertise. Part of its function
would be recommending appropriate carbon budgets and policies and it would
establish an advisory committee in relation to climate adaptation. It also envisaged
making the adoption of carbon budgets a legal requirement from 2021. The
32nd Dáil was dissolved before the Bill could be presented to it for discussion.
The CA did enjoy some success in influencing climate policy, as evidenced in
its contribution to the new governance and accountability structures outlined
226
in the Climate Action Plan, and its proposed mitigation and adaption measures
have been largely endorsed. By contrast, its redistributive recommendations
(the carbon tax1 and the tax on GHG emissions from the agricultural sector in
particular) did not garner much traction.
Having provided an overview of the Irish CA’s contribution to climate
policy, the chapter now moves to analyse the role CAs may play as methods of
policy analysis.
CAs as a method of policy analysis

Fung’s (2015) ‘democracy cube’ provides a valuable framework for analysing
various forms of public participation using three axes: participants (who
participates and how they are selected); communication and decision modes;
and authority and power (2015). Here these axes are applied to the Irish CA
processes and practice.
Participants
The CA’s participants were selected using stratified random sampling and it was
they who were the decision makers within the CA. They were chosen by a
polling company that had base targets to meet across the following categories; sex,
age, socioeconomic cohorts and region.2 The company was relatively successful in
meeting the targets relating to sex and age, but enjoyed less success in delivering
the socioeconomic and regional targets. Farrell and colleagues (2020) note that
the CA’s membership was ‘quite significantly skewed in favour of the middle
to upper middle class category, and there was a notable under-representation
of farmers’. Additionally, the region of Munster tended to be over-represented
in the CA while Connacht/Ulster was quite heavily underrepresented (Farrell
et al, 2020).
This gap in representation raises questions about the CA’s input legitimacy.
The premise behind mini-publics is that they are just that – a small but relatively
reflective representation (descriptively at least) of the society in which they live.
Inclusion rests at the heart of both participatory and deliberative democratic
processes. From the perspective of climate policy, it is of grave concern that lower
socioeconomic groups and farmers were under-represented. Irish farmers have a
fundamental role in addressing the challenge of climate change, both as custodians
of the countryside but also as representatives of a sector whose direct input is
required to reduce GHG emissions. There may be a number of reasons these
specific cohorts were difficult to recruit. First, and most significantly, CAs operate
in a world marked by asymmetries of power, access, wealth and so on. These may
act as social and cultural barriers to participation. In the absence of hard data,
we can only speculate as to the specific reasons for the under-representation of
these cohorts. The fact that the CA did not pay its members honoraria for their
participation, coupled with the increasing casualisation of labour and precarious
227
nature of work, may have made weekend attendance impossible for some. It
is also possible that the ‘always on duty’ nature of farming made it difficult for
members of that community to commit to weekends at a location far removed
from their farms.
More robust recruitment measures on the part of polling companies as well
as specific efforts to target hard-to-reach groups are measures that may address
this issue in future CAs (Farrell et al, 2020). Separately, it is worth noting that
members of the recently established CA on gender equality (2020) will for the
first time, in the Irish context at least, receive a stipend in recognition of the
work they do on behalf of the state.
Communication and decision making

The CA’s participatory and deliberative format provided time and space for
public submissions and expert evidence; facilitated small-group discussions
at which members identified a range of options and drafted a ballot paper;
and finalised recommendations by secret ballot (majority vote). The process
allowed for a much deeper form of engagement with the issue than would have
been provided under traditional consultation mechanisms, in terms of mapping
options and making decisions, thereby leading to more considered judgment
on the matter.
One of the challenges faced by CA members was tackling a broad, multi-
sectoral issue in such a short period of time. The Chair endeavoured to include
other consensus views in the ancillary recommendations but the restrictive
amount of time allocated to the topic meant little or no space on the programme
for community and/or individual stories on the lived experience of climate
change regionally, nationally and internationally. However, it did innovatively
include practical examples of local climate leadership to elucidate the concepts
highlighted in the expert presentations. In a CA in which certain cohorts are
under-represented, there is the real risk that key discourses and perspectives will
be excluded from the discussions (albeit inadvertently). This, plus the pressure to
ensure a balance between expert evidence and deliberation in a tight time period,
increases the risk of the deliberations being framed in a particular fashion. It is
worth noting that the CA’s recommendations are silent on climate justice, just
transitions and energy poverty, particularly in light of Devaney and colleagues’
(2020a) findings that submissions by individuals more than experts tended to
refer to climate justice arguments. This begs questions on the framing of the
CAs discussions, the optimal number of topics allocated to a CA in a given time
frame, as well as the optimal balance between expert presentations, individual
submissions, small-group deliberations and stakeholder panel discussions.
These issues notwithstanding, research by Farrell and colleagues (2020) finds
that the overwhelming majority of CA members were satisfied with the quality
of the deliberative process across all of the 11 weekends. Responding to survey
questions, they felt ‘they were free to raise their views, that they had ample
228
speaking opportunities, and that other members respected what they had to say’
(Farrell et al, 2020).
Authority and power

In terms of influence, participants in the CA process advised government on
the policy area in question, but did not have final decision-making power.
Ultimate authority rests with the government and the Dáil, as is to be expected
in a parliamentary democracy. In terms of the policy-making process, CAs
can play a role in framing the problem and/or issue; mapping the options;
participating in debate and discussion; and presenting a range of informed policy
recommendations. In terms of framing, the CA did not have the power to set
its own agenda. It did, however, draw on the public submissions, its expert
advisory group and its steering committee to frame its deliberations and the CA’s
programme for each weekend was agreed by a steering group of CA members
working on drafts prepared by the secretariat and the expert advisory group.
Arguably CAs’ democratic value lies in their capacity to harness diverse forms
of expertise and evidence to develop clear, well-defined policy recommendations,
Additionally, it is worth noting the Irish CAs’ participatory underpinning in terms
of inclusion of people, perspectives and knowledge through the use of public
submissions, membership recruitment, and leader and/or advocacy discussion
panels. That the Irish process was public and had a specific responding role
for parliamentary committees made it transparent, accountable and legitimate.
As noted, it was weak, however, in terms of agenda setting and final decision
making, and had no powers of implementation or review.
Drawing on Villaverde and García-Rubio’s framework on levels of public
participation (2017, p 2483), this chapter categorises CAs as exercises of co‑design
to the extent that they give a small group of citizens ‘an active role in the
development and the design of policy’. Blending expertise, informed arguments
and diverse perspectives, they are potentially a way of harnessing knowledge
and provide a forum for the co-creation of solutions to policy problems in ways
that are in keeping with Dryzek’s (2010) call for more participatory, deliberative
frameworks for policy analysis. More significantly, they can be a ‘powerful
segment’ of the deliberative system and contribute to the ‘slow politics’ required
to tackle intractable policy challenges that need long-term solutions impervious
to short-term electoral cycles (Dryzek et al, 2019).
Conclusion
In placing citizens at the heart of the decision making process, deliberative mini-
publics such as CAs have much to commend them and recent decades have
witnessed significant growth in their use worldwide.
Traditionally, their greatest challenge has been in achieving impact in terms
of contributing to wider public discourses, effecting change and reforming
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political processes, a point made by Fung (2015, p 514) when he highlighted

the following concerns: the ‘absence of systemic leadership’; the lack of ‘popular
or elite consensus’ on the part of participatory and deliberative processes; and the
‘limited scope and powers’ of these innovations.
The Irish CAs have bucked this trend by showing that deliberative mini-publics
can make a difference in terms of constitutional change and political processes.
They also highlight how deliberative democratic innovations can successfully
complement representative and direct forms of democracy in ways that overcome
relative shortcomings. They have become broadly accepted as way of ‘doing
politics’, as witnessed by calls from civil society organisations, academics, interest
groups and others for CAs on housing, education and so on. Finally, and of
particular import for this chapter, they show how they may be used in policy
analysis, an arena in which citizens’ juries have been traditionally the more widely
used democratic innovation.
The use of CAs on the most serious issue of climate change is very new and
Ireland has once again paved the way in incorporating this innovation in its
policy response to the problem. The Irish CA record of impact on climate policy
is strong. It certainly contributed to the new governance and accountability
structures outlined in the Climate Action Plan and its proposed mitigation and
adaption measures have been largely endorsed. The 32nd Dáil ended before
these new structures were underpinned by legislation. The 33rd Dáil may
or may not enact the legislation in its original form. The CA’s redistributive
recommendations (namely those on the carbon tax and a tax on GHG emissions
from the agricultural sector) have been less impactful and serve as a reminder of
the challenges faced by these processes when they encounter governments with a
different political agenda and the healthy tension, in terms of checks and balances,
that exists in a wider deliberative democratic system with specific powers for
representative, direct and participatory institutions.
This analysis of the potential of CAs as a method of policy analysis finds that this
deliberative democratic innovation can, as a process of co-design, engage citizens
in the systematic analysis of policy problems in ways that are inclusive, evidence-
based, transparent and accountable. They also have the potential to enhance
moments of justification and reflection within the deliberative democratic system
(Dryzek et al, 2019), thereby facilitating a deliberative reconstruction of politics
that is inclusive, future focused and public spirited (Dryzek and Niemeyer,
2019). Its focus on one case study alone, the Irish CA’s contribution to climate
policy, is a limitation. At the time of writing, CAs on climate change are taking
place in the UK and France. As the evidence emerges from their work, future
research may test their impact on policy and their value as a policy analysis
method. Nonetheless, the Irish case does highlight CAs’ potential in this regard.
It also comes with a timely reminder of the need for these processes to be
well designed and for actors ‘in and around deliberative processes’ (Curato et al,
2017) to pay careful attention to the recruitment, duration, number of topics,
tone, framing, format and procedures of deliberative processes to ensure that
230
inclusion and popular control are protected at all stages in the process and that
they are consequential.
Notes
1 The 2020 Budget increased carbon tax from €20 per tonne to €26 per tonne. The JOCCA
committed to implement a carbon tax rate of €80 a tonne by 2030. This was endorsed by Fine
Gael, Fianna Fáil, the Labour Party and the Green Party (which favours €100 per tonne) in
their election manifestos for 2020.
2 For information on the selection of members, see https://2016-2018.citizensassembly.ie/en/
About-the-Citizens-Assembly/Who-are-the-Members [Accessed 31 January 2020].
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233
SIXTEEN
Irish science policy: a case study

in evidence-based policy design
for small open economies
Eoin Cullina, Jason Harold and John McHale
Introduction
Science policy is receiving more attention as an instrument for economic
development as economic growth becomes increasingly dependent on
knowledge-intensive industries. The success of such industries depends on
access to knowledge. As captured by modern theories of endogenous growth,
new ideas (and associated new products and services) result from combining the
existing stock of ideas with research and development (R&D) (Romer, 1990;
Jones, 1995). Much of this R&D investment is done by private firms. However,
such firms tend to underinvest in basic science and other forms of knowledge
creation where much of the benefit spills over to other firms. There is therefore
an important role for governments to fund and incentivise knowledge creation
where that knowledge is underprovided by the market.
However, governments of small open economies (SOEs) such as Ireland face
a particular challenge in devising a strategy for science policy. Smallness poses
two obvious challenges: first, the benefits of science investments are likely to
flow disproportionately to other countries; and second, small size may limit the
benefits of agglomeration economies that are central to many knowledge-intensive
industries and indeed in the production of science itself (Grossman and Helpman,
1991; Agrawal and Cockburn, 2003). In spending scarce resources on science,
governments must establish a social contract with researchers and society at large
to ensure the social benefits match the significant social (opportunity) costs.
Two broad rationales can be identified for why it may be worthwhile for an
SOE to invest in science despite the obvious spillover and scale challenges. The
first is the geographical stickiness of new knowledge production: there is a vast
literature documenting the localisation of knowledge spillovers and the related
tendency for knowledge to diffuse slowly across space over time (Trajtenberg
et al, 1992; Agrawal et al, 2006). The second is the importance of ‘absorptive
capacity’ (Cohen and Levinthal, 1990): the capacity to absorb knowledge from
the vast global stocks of knowledge depends in part on being active at the frontiers
in producing new knowledge. The national benefit of research is then not so
much in the new knowledge you create, but the advantage that research gives
235
you in being able to access knowledge produced elsewhere, including through

research-led teaching. Recognising the importance of science investments, the
Irish government has started to scale up its investments in science through funders
such as Science Foundation Ireland (SFI), the Health Research Board (HRB)
and Enterprise Ireland (EI). Public funding of R&D was €739.3 million in 2017
up from €718.9 million in 2016 and is estimated to have further increased to
€751.7 million in 2018 (see Figure 16.1). Also evidence shows investment in
science policy analysis where funding agencies such as SFI have funded policy
research programmes.
Figure 16.1: Irish government budget allocations for R&D in current prices, € millions (2007–18)
1,000
930.4
894.1 890.4
800
824.8
786.6
752.4 726.8 736.3 739.3 751.7
721.7 718.9
600
€ millions
400
200
0
2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018
est
Source: DBEI (2018)
A large policy evaluation literature exists on effectiveness of R&D and science

policies (see Bloom et al, 2019 for a recent survey). These policies include public
funding of research, direct investments in the supply of science, technology,
engineering and mathematics (STEM) graduates, direct R&D grants, R&D tax
credits, facilitation of skilled migration and mission-oriented policies.
Much of the available research relates to large economies, raising a question
about the applicability of the findings to SOEs. This raises a concern that science
policy for Ireland is conducted in a relative policy analysis vacuum. This chapter
reviews key findings from the science policy literature and the (sparse) literature
on Ireland-specific policy evaluation. Given the importance of knowledge
intensive sectors to the growth prospects of the Irish economy and the substantial
exchequer funds being invested, the recent investments by SFI and other agencies
in evidence-based science policy analysis reflects a recognition that much policy
making in this area for Ireland is based on a relatively weak evidence base.
This chapter reviews the strategy and science of Irish science policy in light
of the particular challenges for such policies in an SOE. The strategic approach
236
Irish science policy
followed by the government has focused on policies that involve a focus on

applied/translational research, direct industry engagement to maximise local
spillovers, the development of research centres to encourage such spillovers and
develop scale, and the targeted recruitment of international star scientists to
act as catalysts for the development of clusters of excellence in Irish science.
This chapter can be read as a case study in policy development to support a
modern knowledge-based economy. It reviews the international literature on
the rationales for science policy and also the literature on the evaluation of
science investments. It also discusses some of the main Irish policy initiatives
and the (limited) evaluation literature that exists on the impact of these policies.
In addition, SFI has recently launched a major funding programme to study
the science of Irish science policy, so the timing is opportune to take stock of
evaluation work on science policy. The chapter finally discusses the current and
future strategic direction of science policy in light of the particular challenges
facing Ireland as an SOE.
Why SOEs should invest in science

The funding of scientific research by governments forms part of a social contract.
Governments are supported by their citizenry on the basis of a corresponding
effort on their part to improve society through capital investment in critical
infrastructure. Examples include investments in health care, education, transport
and funded scientific research. Funded scientific research seeks to create new
knowledge where research funding agencies play a major role in supporting
knowledge production (Feldman and Lichtenberg, 1998). Attempts to generate
knowledge and capture value from scientific research presents as a complex
process where SOEs such as Ireland face a challenge in managing spillovers that
arise from the knowledge production process. Governments in SOEs face the
problem of funding research where the benefit arising from knowledge does not
always rest locally and spills over into global initiatives. The institutions behind
science have sought to attain a better understanding of the effects of scientific
research on economies and build capacity in the area of science policy analysis
(Gluckman, 2009, 2018). Research has examined not only the direct impact of
research but also the associated spillover effects from the knowledge produced
(Feldman, 1999; Breschi and Lissoni, 2001). This challenge is further complicated
by the fact that SOEs do not enjoy the same budgets or abilities to fund the type
and scale of research enjoyed by larger nations.
Financial support provided by governments to R&D presents as a form of
conditional funding; funding is offered in consideration for a return from the
scientist in the form of solving societal challenges, where this funding forms part
of a social contract. A tension has existed within this social contract between the
competing interests of basic frontier science and applied science. With a large
emphasis on contemporary research supporting private industry, a challenge is
faced by SOEs such as Ireland in supporting basic research (Arnold and Thuriaux,
237
2001). Globally, there is evidence of a move from supporting basic research

to investing in more applied approaches that more closely match the needs of
industry (Trajtenberg et al, 1992; Hershberg et al, 2007). The need to balance
such competing interests presents as a particular challenge for SOEs where
limited resources are available to support both approaches. It follows that policy
analysis plays a critical role for SOEs in understanding and, in turn, addressing
this tension.
Challenges for SOEs to invest in science

Ireland forms part of a Small Advanced Economies Initiative (SAEI), featuring
input from Denmark, Finland, Israel, New Zealand, Singapore and Switzerland.
Science funding agencies in these countries share best practices and data for the
purposes of forming better science of science policy (SoSP). The constituent
nations of the working group share relative similarities in terms of output, focus
on the knowledge economy, national population figures, educational ethos,
commitments to research integrity and intellectual property (IP) protections for
research. The SAEI set out to achieve various goals, including the development of
a common language for the concepts surrounding impact and impact assessment
across countries, and sharing lessons in implementation of impact evaluation.
Smaller economies face a challenge in maximising their position on the global
stage and achieving value for money through science technology and innovation
(Gluckman et al, 2012; Padilla-Pérez and Gaudin, 2014). This challenge is
represented in the form of various trade-offs made by national funding agencies
in SOEs such as Ireland where it is posited that recent governments have chosen
to create and support policy for national priority areas over and above frontier
basic research to the disdain of the scientific community (Cotter, 2015). One such
example is recent pressure placed on the Irish government to pay for membership
of Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire (CERN) (Butler, 2018).
SOEs face various challenges in funding scientific research, including holding
minimal input in international forums; lacking the capabilities or capacities to
undertake all domains of research in depth; deciding where to apply limited
funds; and managing the balance between research where the primary outcome
is enhanced economic growth and research for other possible public good
outcomes (Gluckman et al, 2012). Ireland largely avoided significant evolutions
in innovation and science policy until the later part of the 20th century where in
recent decades, successive governments have sought to maximise their hand with
the scarce resources available. It is argued that small economies such as Ireland can
least afford to neglect science, although this is not to suggest that they can afford
wide-scale research (Trench, 2017). In this context, Irish funders of scientific
research have adopted a resourceful yet ambitious approach to the funding of
impactful research, effected through science policy.
A problem in garnering support for science in SOEs lies in the fact that much
of the benefit arising from investment in science spills over to other countries.
238
This challenge can hold with particular force for SOEs given that only a small
fraction of the benefits may be appropriated by the sponsoring country. The
output of funded scientific research in terms of knowledge production is viewed
as a cumulative process, in that previous existing knowledge is combined into
new knowledge (Weitzman, 1998; Arthur, 2009). Central to the economics
approach is the idea of an innovation (or knowledge) production function, (see
Arrow, 1962; Griliches, 1979; Romer, 1990; Jones, 1995), whereby innovation
outputs depend on human and non-human inputs and critically on access to
knowledge. The related concept of absorptive capacity, sometimes referred to
as the second face of R&D, refers to the capacity to absorb knowledge that is
created by others and thus move towards the technological frontier. A growing
body of evidence suggests that a key to absorptive capacity for an individual or
organisation is being active in frontier research (Cohen and Levinthal, 1989;
Griffith et al, 2004). Thus, the benefits of research are not limited to the direct
knowledge created – the first face – but also the indirect benefit of being better
positioned to absorb frontier knowledge.
Knowledge spillovers are of specific interest to SOEs where both positive and
negative effects can be observed (Jaffe et al, 1993; Jaffe, 2013). Accordingly,
further analysis is required into science policy surrounding knowledge spillovers.
Evidence on the social return to science investments

The real contribution to an economy from investment in science is difficult
to measure. Economic analysis and the evaluation of research programmes
and outputs presents as a means to examine the return on investments. Firms
and organisations are more often concerned with the private returns to R&D
investment, while policy makers are generally interested in evidence for social or
economy-wide returns, especially when investment in science is publicly funded.
Indeed, it is the estimated gap between the social and private rates of return
that explains why investment in science is a topic of policy concern in the first
place (Jaffe, 2008). The private rate of return measures the return on investment
in science that flows directly to the organisation conducting scientific research,
whereas the social rate of return takes into account the additional benefits from
research to society as a whole. More specifically, investment in science creates
knowledge spillovers, whereby there is a positive knowledge externality to society
far beyond the knowledge benefits accumulated to any single organisation directly
involved in the research. Thus, the difference between the social and private rates
of return captures these spillovers to some degree. For this reason, any estimation
of the difference in returns is closely associated with a reasonable inference of
these spillovers, and a valuable measure for policy makers concerned with public
investment in science.
Within this context, there is a large body of international literature that
aims to estimate the economic returns to investment in science. This, in turn,
provides evidence to suggest the social rate of return tends to be much higher
239
than the private rate of return, and that society generally benefits from spillover
effects due to an investment in science. Most of these international estimates
are based on the seminal approach of Griliches (1979). He proposed a so-called
production function framework to help integrate the value of investment in
science into economic modelling and to estimate the private and social returns
to R&D. In this framework, a production function is employed that relates
the quantity produced of a good (output) to the quantities of input required
to produce the output – that is, labour, capital and technology. The function
is further augmented with a measure of the firm’s own knowledge capital (in-
house R&D) as well as a measure of external knowledge capital (external R&D),
where external knowledge capital is either held by other firms in the industry,
or by other countries, dependent on the level of aggregation. In the production
function framework, the input of external R&D aims to capture the effect of
knowledge spillovers on output, while the measure for in-house R&D helps
evaluate the private benefit of R&D to a firm’s output.
In general, estimates of the social rate of return to R&D are found to range
positively from close to zero up to 100% across the different studies and are
almost always estimated to be greater than the private returns (Hall et al, 2010).
There is also some evidence to suggest that the rate of return could be lower
for public R&D investment when compared with private R&D, particularly in
manufacturing industries (Hall et al, 2010). Nevertheless, the social rates of return
to publicly funded R&D are estimated to range between 20% and 67% in the
government-sponsored agricultural sector (Kumar et al, 2009), and are suggested
to be between 23% and 28% for worldwide investment in academic research
(Mansfield, 1991). Furthermore, in focusing on the difference between actual and
optimal R&D expenditures at the firm level, Jones and Williams (1998) reported
that optimal investment in R&D is at least two to four times actual investment
based on their own estimates of social returns. In terms of international spillovers,
there is further empirical evidence to support that foreign R&D has spillover
effects on domestic productivity with the effects found to be strongest in SOEs
(Coe and Helpman, 1995; Keller, 1998).
From a wider perspective, Ugur and colleagues (2016) synthesised the
available evidence on returns to R&D investment in Organisation for Economic
Co‑operation and Development (OECD) firms and industries, then conducted
a meta-analysis of the 1,253 estimates from 65 primary studies that implement
the production function framework. They reported that private and within-
industry social returns are also positive, but smaller and more heterogeneous
than estimates in other reviews including that by Hall et al (2010). On the other
hand, recent evidence that proposes more robust estimates of the gap between
social and private returns by accounting for the dynamic nature of knowledge
spillovers suggests that social returns to R&D are about three times as large as
the private returns (Colino, 2016). Overall, the large variability found in the
values of the social rates of return can be explained by a number of factors across
the separate analyses. These include the selected study samples, the treatment
240
of knowledge spillovers, the time period examined, the sector observed, the
econometric specification, and the level of aggregation in the studies.
Irish science policy initiatives

The development of science policy in Ireland faces challenges where in
recent decades the development of public policy has been under-resourced.
MacCarthaigh (2013, p 91), states that ‘the study of public policy making
and implementation is not a prominent feature of the Irish social and political
sciences’. This coincides with calls for the greater use of economic analysis in
evidence-based decision making (Ruane, 2013). However, Irish science policy
has shown evidence of progress in recent years. Arising from government policy
in science, new research clusters and centres have been created. Industry-matched
funding programmes have assisted joint ventures between industry and research
centres. Furthermore, research agencies have applied funding to both frontier and
applied research projects. Notably, funding agencies have engaged in the funding
of research centring on SoSP. Also funding agencies have funded the attraction
of star talent to Ireland. Evidence also shows increased sharing and learning with
international funding agencies; evidence of increased scientific output quantity
and quality; and evidence of strong performance in global research rankings.
Research centres were formulated by SFI with a view to linking scientists and
engineers in partnerships across academia and industry to address major societal
and scientific challenges. National priority areas serve as a guide for prospective
research funding applicants and serve to set out the key reasons for a government’s
decision to invest in a given domain with evidence of similar approaches globally.
Funding agencies have sought to create research policy and research clusters
around leading scientific fields of interest such as data analytics. The Irish
government’s Action Plan for Jobs 2013 identified ‘big data’ as one of the key
areas where Ireland can gain competitive edge over other countries. The Insight
Centre for Data Analytics, which brings together both public and private research
and industry, was created as a joint initiative between researchers across several
universities and other partner institutions. Also, in recent years there is increased
evidence of public agencies collaborating with funding agencies such as SFI
(see Box 16.1). Currently, 17 research centres are operational with the plan for
further expansion in the years to come. The research centres have received major
support from industry with matched funding, with some €230 million committed
through industry partnerships to facilitate research and training executed through
the research centres. An interim report has shown that the SFI Research Centre
Programme has met or exceeded most of the targets initially set. Individual
studies have also shown that centres have had significant economic impacts on
the economy (Lenihan et al, 2018). Ireland has provided specific investments
into basic frontier research where in 2018 the government, through the Irish
Research Council, provided a €29.6 million investment in frontier research
through Laureate Awards. This investment was made on foot of research showing
241
a significant gap in the Irish research and innovation landscape in the area of
frontier basic research.
Box 16.1:Teagasc: Agriculture and Food Development Authority
Agencies such as Teagasc perform an important role in science policy creation and
analysis where they engage in strategic relationships with science funders at multiple
levels. Teagasc supports PhD research programmes in policy analysis and partners with
SFI and other agencies on the SFI Investigators Programme, which supports impactful
researchers and collaborators. It also partners with other institutions in supporting the
SFI agricultural research centre, Vistamilk, and receives funding for science festivals and
public engagement.
Evidence shows that in recent years the government has renewed efforts to
develop SoSP research capacity through supporting national and international
science policy research. International funding agencies have pressed for the
development of evidence-based policy to improve the science behind the
evaluation of science and development of new science policy, where, in particular,
international efforts aim to advance a more quantitative approach to measuring
the impacts of research so as to inform policy creation (Roessner, 2000; Lane,
2009; Lane and Bertuzzi, 2011; Weinberg et al, 2014).
Evidence is also available of increased focus from the Irish perspective on
European Union (EU) policy analysis in recent years. A not-for-profit think
tank, the Institute of International and European Affairs was established to
debate, discuss, analyse and share policy options. Moreover, the Irish Government
Economic and Evaluation Service (IGEES) has in recent years published research
covering topics ranging from energy to employment (see Chapters Four and
Eight, this volume). IGEES seeks to enhance the role of economics and value
for money analysis in public policy making. Furthermore, several Irish academic
institutions including University College Cork, Technological University Dublin,
Trinity College Dublin, University College Dublin, National University of
Ireland Galway and Maynooth University among others have launched courses
specifically focused on policy that encompasses reflections on science policy and
policy analysis.
Irish research funding agencies have also sought to fund and support research
surrounding the evaluation of science policy such as the SFI Policy Research
Programme and the HRB’s policy investigations. The Economic and Social
Research Institute has also examined alternative approaches to building research
capacity in domains such as the social sciences (Ruane and Whelan, 2010).
Furthermore, the funding agencies have launched programmes to attract star
scientists to Ireland such as the SFI Research Professorship Programme. Since its
launch in 2003, the SFI Research Professorship Programme has sought to recruit
242
world-leading researchers in targeted scientific areas. In this context, the work

in this chapter forms part of a larger body of research examining the impact of
star scientists on institutional output. Along with attracting established talent
to Ireland, SFI has launched projects such as the President of Ireland Future
Research Leaders Programme to attract to Ireland outstanding new and emerging
research leaders in both scientific and engineering domains, representing a net
investment of €7.7 million. In recent years, Irish funding agencies also show
evidence of increased involvement and sharing with other European entities and
institutions in the European Research Area through programmes such as Horizon
2020, the European Commission’s (EC) funding programme for research and
innovation. Furthermore, there is substantial joint collaboration among funding
agencies and research councils through policy platforms such as Science Europe.
Policy efforts have focused on removing barriers and imposing conditions so
that scientists can move more easily between member states. Another core aspect
of work completed includes the sharing of metrics for benchmarking purposes
among member states. Through coordinated interactions and meetings facilitated
by the EC, practices are agreed in areas relating to the evaluation of research,
excellence in science and the societal impact arising from science.
More recently, Irish-funded scientific research has shown benefits arising from
informed science policy where various leading international indicators highlight
the progress made. The impact of scientists is measured through various metrics,
including those relating to national and international funding leveraged; star
publications produced; doctoral students graduated; researchers hired; spin-outs
created; patents issued; licensing revenue gained; and the number and quality
of collaborations initiated. Agenda 2020, SFIs strategy document (SFI, 2015),
sets out a vision for science in Ireland, and its focus is specifically on output
metrics related to business, spin-outs, the licencing of research technology and
the production of a highly educated workforce. As of 2019, Ireland is ranked
12th in the world global scientific ranking (SFI, 2019). Ireland has engaged and
participated in various international scientific efforts related to science policy.
These efforts have included providing input into global science policy, in particular
for the developing world through organisations such as the United Nations
and OECD as well as participation both directly and indirectly in discussions
between trade blocks such as the EU and Canada. In terms of the European
Innovation Scoreboard, in 2020 Ireland was identified as a strong innovator
(EC, 2020). Additionally, an EU study on knowledge transfer in 2013 identified
Ireland as having strong knowledge transfer policies and good knowledge transfer
performance (Arundel et al, 2013). Such improvements coincide with a renewed
focus on policy analysis. Organisations such as the IGEES seek to drive further
policy analysis and present analytical and statistical outputs.
Notwithstanding recent efforts in the domain, it could still be argued that there
is evidence of a science policy failure/policy analysis deficit (Hennigan, 2013;
McConnell, 2015). This is further strengthened by similar claims that Ireland has
a tradition of policy making that lacks research evidence, which can be observed
243
in both science and enterprise policy (Lunn and Ruane, 2013) (see Chapter Five,
this volume). Despite limited research focusing on Irish (Boden and Fitzgibbon,
1995; Kane, 2001, 2014) and European (Georghiou, 1995) efforts at formulating
policy regarding science evaluation, there is a notable absence of research in the
SoSP domain more generally. Science policy has been used to address failures in
higher education. For example, some 40 STEM professorships were created in
2019 to address the under-representation of women in STEM areas (see Chapter
Fourteen, this volume).
Conclusion
Our review of the evidence of the impact of state investments in science suggests
both the high (global) social return to investment and also the challenges facing
SOEs in recouping such investments due to spillover and scale effects. This
creates an understandable challenge for stakeholders in science investments to
achieve support for a social contract that prioritises scarce fiscal resources for
such investments. Recognising this challenge, this chapter has reviewed various
rationales for supporting domestic science in SOE, notably the localisation
of knowledge spillovers, absorptive capacity effects and the role of targeted
agglomerations. This research serves to motivate government investment in
science policy analysis and more specifically the economic analysis of impacts
arising from spillover and scale effects.
The strategic direction of Irish science policy can be thought of as responses
to these rationales. The prioritisation of the applied/translational end over the
basic end of the research spectrum can be thought of as an attempt to capitalise
on greater localisation effects for this type of research. Efforts to involve industry
in research efforts can be further understood as an attempt to maximise such
effects. On the other hand, the likely strong absorptive capacity benefits of
investments in basic science – especially when it is use-inspired – explains the
willingness to continue to invest in basic science even if it remains relatively
under-prioritised relative to applied/translational research. The focus on major
research centres – especially those tied to industry – can be viewed as an effort to
achieve targeted agglomerations or clusters where there are significant economies
of scale associated with local research activity. Star-focused research professorship
schemes are another example of attempts to catalyse cluster formation in
targeted areas where a distinctive advantage is possible. Of course, such targeted
efforts must balance the need for broad-based expertise to support a complex
knowledge-intensive economic system, the trade-off between the advantages of
exploiting areas of distinctive advantage versus exploring possible new areas of
potential advantage, and the value of diversity in supporting scientific discovery
and innovation when new ideas result from new combinations of existing ideas.
Notwithstanding its importance to the development of a knowledge intensive
economy, evidence-based research on SoSP has traditionally been relatively
neglected compared with other policy areas. However, there are indications that
244
this is changing. SFI has recently initiated two significant funding rounds on
SoSP. These programmes provide additional support to Irish academic institutions
to facilitate research in the science policy domain. There is also support at a
European level for research in this area, with Horizon 2020 initiatives of the
EC covering areas of research where science policy affects society, for example
the Science With and For Society work programme. Also greater collaboration
in the domain has been achieved through organisations such as Science Europe
where the public funders of scientific research engage in strategic sharing and
learning. Supported by SFI, the authors of this chapter are currently exploring
the catalytic effects of star scientists on the research productivity of receiving
institutions. Other SFI-supported projects include research providing a national
evaluation and international benchmarking of science policy in Ireland, a study
of peer review at SFI and an examination of the role of talent and human capital
management in national science foundations. As we enter into the next phase of
strategy development for the building of scientific research capacity, these efforts
to evaluate what policies work and to understand why they work will be essential
to design an effective Irish science research system with broad social support.
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) grant 17/SPR/5329 to the Whitaker
Institute, National University of Ireland Galway from the SFI Science Policy Research Programme.
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248
SEVENTEEN
Media discourses on the economy in

Ireland: framing the policy possibilities
Brendan K. O’Rourke
Introduction
Ireland suffered a lot economically in the Great Recession following the 2008
global financial crisis, yet its policies continued on a neoliberal trajectory, making
Irish neoliberalism less a Zombie and more like a reinvigorated Frankenstein’s
monster, with ordoliberal transplants from Germany grafted on to an Anglo-
American neoliberal composite body. Yet, along with these continuities came
much change. There was political change in party strengths and personnel.
There was change in the Irish state’s capacity for policy analysis (MacCarthaigh,
2017), an increase in the number of policy analysts and their specialisms, and an
increased stress on evidence-based policy making (see Chapters Four and Eight,
this volume). How can a discursive approach help explain these continuities and
changes in policy making? Perhaps, more importantly, how do we respond to
make Irish policy discourse better?
This chapter first argues that a discursive approach can add much to our
understanding of what has been happening in policy analysis in Ireland. The
concept of hyper-specialisation is then introduced as it is both an important
feature of the context in which policy discourse takes place, and because it shows
the complexities of what discourses face as they travel across societies. Next,
the chapter examines policy-relevant discourses of media and actors within the
media, and unpacks recent developments to ascertain what they mean for Irish
public policy discourse. It then examines how internationalisation affects such
policy discourses and the impact of that complication on participation in policy
debates. Further complexities are introduced in the following section, which
considers the effects of technocratisation, and particularly economisation, on how
policy is discussed. The final section of the chapter draws some conclusions from
the earlier exploration of the rather daunting features of our policy discourses.
A more discursive view: beyond pure ideas to interactions and

material affordances
Along with individuals, interests and institutions, ideas have long been understood
as important in shaping policy. Studies informed by discursive institutionalism
(Schmidt, 2008) on the discourse of social science experts and analysis of media
249
coverage of the economy (Rieder and Theine, 2019) make clear that such ideas
do not enter the policy arena as individually considered and evaluated atomic
units. Such work has shown that the view of ideas being mixed and matched until
the best possible outcome emerges from a well-functioning marketplace of ideas
is just not how this process works. Rather, the means of communication, from
the experts whose messages are increasingly packaged for impact, and the format
of various traditional and social media outlets, means that these ideas compete
embedded in alternative discourses that frame policy possibilities.
In studies using a traditional ideological approach, such communications are
reduced to their abstract ideas, which are then grouped according to logical
consistency. Taking a discursive view, as opposed to an ideational one, means
not only examining communications from the rationale of such abstract ideas,
but also exploring the way in which the medium, including the structures of
language itself and the affordances of technology, allows and inhibits the way the
communication plays out in interaction. Logical tensions in debate or discussion,
say between the rule of law and the need for freedom, may be viewed as a
weakness in the ideology, but viewed as a discourse, the ability of such a tension
to energise more similar debate about that tension is revealed as a strength.
Contradictory ideas in a discourse can help the discourse reproduce. The
technology of broadcast radio, with its one-to-many intimacy, affords different
possibilities from those arising from the public interactional nature of Twitter.
Though we may be able to abstract the same idea in messages in either medium,
how those messages play out in interaction on the different media is likely to be
very different. Rather than focus on the ideational content of communication
alone, a discourse analysis approach also demands an understanding of how the
different parties in that communication interact and the way the structure of the
means by which they do shapes the way that communication affects us overall,
not just at the surface rational and explicit level. Communications shape our
identities, the relations we have with each other and how we represent any
realities to ourselves as we act on them (Fairclough, 1993). A discursive view
recognises that policy too needs to be communicated and that communication
too shapes the way the policy works, even when a different impact might have
been intended or anticipated: when a fine was introduced at a day-care centre
for lateness in picking up the child, parents’ reaction to the communication, that
lateness was something that could be easily paid for, seemed to outweigh the
disincentive of the fine (Gneezy et al, 2011).
In the Irish case, some have sought an explanation of the continuities in Irish
economic policy in the conservative nature of the revolution in which the state
was born (for example, O’Rourke and Hogan, 2017) and the institutionalisation
of the former colonial master’s ‘treasury model’ linked with the subsequent
crowning of economists in the founding of institutions such as the Economic
and Social Research Institute (see Chapter Two, this volume). This may at
least in part be a good explanation. Yet, the institutional power of economists
within the Irish state, in comparison to other states, has been weak (Christensen,
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Media discourses on the economy in Ireland
2017). FitzGerald and O’Rourke (2018) argue that means that the modern Irish
economics profession’s discourse in the media has been, until the 2008 crisis,
its chief way of influencing policy. Indeed, the hostility between politicians and
economists in Ireland, and some, if relatively quiet warnings from academic
economists during the post-2000 Celtic boom period, have probably added
more authority to the discourse of Irish economists. The discursive approach
draws our attention to some issues, and their interactive impact, pertinent to
policy analysis, that might be missed if the focus is only on individuals, interests,
institutions and ideas. The next sections focuses on some features of discourse
of relevance to policy.
Hyper-specialisation and the dangers of endarkenment

Specialisation has been advancing for some centuries and is a key feature of
capitalism. Indeed, specialisation and its problems have motivated social scientists
to try to understand how such modern societies could operate in comparison to
the personal relationship system in traditional societies. Despite being recognised
by early social scientists, specialisation and its increasing complexities seem to
demand constantly deeper understandings. Arguably, the increasing complexities
of specialisation undermined policies based on detailed plans so characteristic of
1945–70. Ireland’s 1958 Programme for Economic Expansion and particularly its
1963/64 successor were both extremely detailed and successful rhetorically, but
by 1970 complex input–output model targets had been replaced by the single
goal of joining the European Economic Community (Daly, 2016, pp 39–54).
For the case of economic planning in Ireland, the complexities of an increasingly
internationalised economic world made the future harder to predict, as the oil
price shocks of the early 1970s illustrated.
Neoliberal ‘talk’ had things to say concerning such increased complexity from
specialisation emerging in the 20th century. For example, Hayek’s (1945) world
was one where buyers could discover what they wanted as they encountered the
various market offerings, oblivious to the details of how a thing was produced,
but relying on their market-informed assessment of products and their prices:
no one person may know how to make a modern pencil from scratch, but most
can assess for themselves if a particular pencil is worth its price (Read, 2015).
For the 21st century, there seems to be another leap in the level of specialisation.
For Millgram (2015), this change in extent has meant a change in the quality of
interdependence that warrants a neologism: ‘hyper-specialisation’ means that we
now live in a world where we are not merely dependent on others for what they
produce, but we live in a world where we depend on others for their assessments
of what is produced. Whereas we can judge among a variety of pencils as to what
best suits our needs, choosing which bit of software best suits our needs depends
more heavily on the assessments provided by others.
Millgram (2015) argues that this reliance on the assessments of specialists
undermines the public sphere of the enlightenment that requires individuals
251
capable of making independent assessments, and threatens a new endarkenment.

As language is shaped by our tasks and our tasks are becoming more and more
specialised, our discourse begins to differentiate itself in important ways.
This differentiation in hyper-specialisation may become so great that mutual
intelligibility becomes a struggle, especially where relevant discourse is tied to
particular specialisations. In terms of the discourse in which policy debates take
place, we can see this problem as particularly acute in the striving for evidence-
based policy based on the view of experts, with their specialised and differing use
of language (see Chapter Five, this volume). Increasingly, what evidence counts
as good depends on the assessment of experts, and assessing which experts to
trust is no easy task. The communications systems through which we interact on
these matters are increasingly complex, where the discourse produced seems as
capable of producing general distrust as of encouraging trust and trustworthiness.
Communicating the complexities of measuring economic growth in a country
dominated by foreign direct investment (FDI) and having low corporate
tax rates is a case in point: the various notes on the 2015 economic growth
figures (see www.cso.ie), and their revision, did little to quell the impression of
‘Leprechaun economics’.
Media
Media is supposed to be one way in which a disintegrated world can be brought
back together again. Those who work in the media are supposed to be the
specialists at such integration. The difficulty of the task facing such intermediaries
in a hyper-specialised world is unprecedented: connecting diverse specialists who
are at once more educated and more reliant on the assessments of others. Yet,
the media is far from a neutral player in its assessments, and such a lack of
neutrality is not dependent on conspiracy or propaganda models (Casey, 2019).
The neoliberal bias, at least on economic issues, has been shown in surveys
of Irish media (Phelan, 2009; Mercille, 2015; Graham and Silke, 2017). The
interplay of academics and politicians in constructing neoliberal austerity as the
lesson to be learned from history has been illustrated (O’Rourke and Hogan,
2013). Rieder and Theine (2019) have also shown how economists not stressing
the neoliberal line can be sidelined, regardless of academic renown. We also
understand how neoliberal framing can construct the entire public service as
problematic (Marron, 2019).
In addition to this challenge from the changing nature of society in general,
and neoliberal bias, the media faces its own upheavals in technologies and
organisational forms. Media changes and their impact on discourse are nothing
new (Habermas, 1989), but the pace of change makes us almost nostalgic for
the problems of old. When it arrived, commercial mass media may have led
to reduced participation in the public sphere, as media professionals crowded
out ordinary citizens. Yet, the very arrival of these one-to-many media outlets
served to provide a commonality for at least important segments of the diversity
252
of specialists that make up modern citizenry. While we are still in an age of

commercial mass media, the online world is one in which the long tail of
fragmented media markets becomes profitable, where filter bubbles and echo
chambers appear as particular affordances of the technology, and fake news has
new profit opportunities. Box 17.1 explores the complex process of budgetary
policy and the role of the media, and the challenges in enabling a coherent public
sphere in the context of complexity and specialisation.
Box 17.1: Challenges to participation: the case of budgetary policy
Taking the case of the government’s budget process, one can see how issues are often
framed by a complex interaction of media, international governance, technocrats and
experts in a way that any feeling of democratic participation, or legitimacy, is far from easy
to identify. In terms of a yearly cycle, a convenient starting point is the requirement of the
government to submit draft budgetary plans to the European Commission (EC) by mid-
October of the year prior to the budget.The EC then responds by publishing European
Union (EU)-wide economic policy priorities, alerts on macroeconomic imbalances and
detailed country reports. All member states are expected to give a response to these
EU-level contributions after debates in their parliaments, following which the EU issues
country-specific recommendations by July. In recent years, the government has convened
a National Economic Dialogue in late June, where select civil societies, invited parties and
academics can make contributions concerning the budget to the government.While the
media continually reports on matters fiscal, its coverage of the budget has its first peak
of the cycle in September, shortly after the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council (IFAC) makes
a report on the fiscal space in which it believes the government can prudently decide
its revenue and spending decisions. The media’s coverage in early September tends to
focus on the policy choices and implications of the budget, but as we move towards
October the coverage becomes like that of a horse race. In October, the budget for the
following year is announced and the cycle begins all over again. And, of course, this cycle,
as described, is considerably simplified: at the EU level, for example, the case study has not
considered the role of the Council of Ministers, or the hidden role of the ‘Eurogroup’ of
Euro-currency ministers who operate apart from the normal scrutiny of EU institutions.
Clearly participating in this discourse, central policy possibilities, requires much work
and reliance on media and expertise, making it difficult for citizens to feel they take part
in a shared public sphere or even to feel the media is making the process transparent.
Technological changes also present problems for participation and it is important

to note how recent and ongoing such technological changes are. The Apple
smartphone was introduced to Ireland in 2008, the first year that more households
in Ireland than not had a broadband connection (Horgan and Flynn, 2017,
pp 256–9). By 2019, over 70% of the population were using the internet for
accessing news media (CSO, 2019, Table 4), with the smartphone being the
253
favourite device for doing so (Kirk et al, 2019, Figure 23) and with Twitter
seeming, so far, to be the most explicitly political platform in terms of electoral
politics (Ó Beacháin, 2014, p 41). As Bruns (2018, p 342) points out, the public
sphere must now be understood as ‘a dynamic, changeable, and barely controllable
system of interacting forces’ rather than a stable equilibrium dominated by a single
type of institute or pattern.
Traditional media do remain important actors in the online world; however,
their authority and centrality in policy debates, such as that on climate change,
is being challenged and replaced by other actors (Häussler, 2019). This
disintermediation makes participation in public policy discourse more inclusive,
but it also makes it more fragmented, and vulnerable to filter bubbles and echo
chambers. More research is needed to know to what extent such effects are
empirically important and to what extent there are counter-tendencies. Dahlgren
and colleagues (2019) show that while people do seek out news, both in print and
online, consistent with their ideologies and that this strengthens their ideological
leanings over time, those who seek out online ideologically leaning sources tend
to seek out both left and right sources. So, being online seems to encourage cross-
cutting exposure in a way that might allow a counter-tendency to fall into echo
chambers. Yet, we cannot assume that truth can always be found by triangulating
it from two biased sources. Micro-targeting, which advertisers find so attractive
and so is a major driver of online discourse, is busily and increasingly effectively
creating our own customised filter bubbles produced by logics of a few very
dominant technology companies.
Fake news and carefully customised messages have clearly been evident in
recent elections and the percentage of the Irish public concerned about fake
news online (61%) is a little above the average EU level (51%), but below
North America (64%) and the United Kingdom (UK) (70%) (Kirk et al, 2019,
Figure 35). Technologies such as Twitter facilitate our tendency for abrasive
interaction without the emotional labour such abrasiveness would cost in person,
or the reputational damage it might cost in traditional professional publications.
That such technological affordances have a systemic effect is illustrated in the Irish
case, when a misattributed tweet played an important role in the 2011 presidential
election campaign (Graham and Hogan, 2014). While such incidents are perhaps
more visible in electoral contests, they must surely be at work too in more
sustained policy discussions. The unfounded claim by the United States (US)
President, Donald Trump, that Ireland was considering reducing its corporation
tax rate to 8% looks like a case of fake news on Ireland influencing US policy
debates on US corporation tax rates (Lynch, 2017).
New technologies are creating personal publics where communication is
selected and shared by personalised criteria, disseminated through networks rather
than at undifferentiated mass publics and has a feeling of the interpersonal and the
intimate rather than the rule-bound public sphere. The new technologies simulate
more the intimacies of traditional community despite their emergence from and
in a modern, or postmodern, society of large-scale impersonal interdependence.
254
While simulating the personal interaction of community, most of our more

recent technologies tend to facilitate context collapse, where contextual cues on
trustworthiness are undermined (Davis and Jurgenson, 2014). Yet, the blurring
of the public and personal continues online generally, whether it be in the
viewpoints in personal Facebook pages, or the intimacies whispered by the
friendly host of favourite podcasts.
Ireland’s fondness for audio media continues into the online age, with 37% of
the population having listened to a podcast in the past month compared with
the EU’s 33% and North America’s 32% (Kirk et al, 2019, Figure 62). Podcast
charts for Ireland in December of 2019 show that while four of the top ten are
sourced from traditional broadcast organisations, those with very particular takes
on public affairs, including Blindboy of Rubberbandits fame, Eamon Dunphy
and David McWilliams, have sufficient personal recognition among the public to
also be in the top ten (www.chartable.com). Perhaps the personal and intimate
nature of podcast discourse (Murray, 2019) feeds a need to recontextualise and
have personal connections in the anonymised world of online discourse.
Internationalisation
Since the extent of the specialisation is influenced by the extent of the market,
globalisation is clearly an element, and driver, of hyper-specialisation. Yet,
international institutions, international commerce and international culture add
their own particular possibilities for endarkenment. The intricacies of multi-
level governance, debates over jurisdiction and tightly coupled global supply
lines, made all the more opaque by cultural differences and distances, add to the
confusion and the interdependences. Ireland’s economic openness means it is
hugely dependent on this hyper-specialised world. Ireland’s smallness means it
does not have available to it the scale of state, culture and dominating institutions
of larger states that may alleviate these disintegrating forces. For Ireland, any
balance to the globalisation of the market can only be sought in transnational
governance arrangements, which also are implicated in the particular forms of
globalisation that have already taken place. The discursive construction of Ireland’s
globalised environment takes place in what itself is a very internationally open
media market, with Irish-based television having less than a 50% share in its
home market, UK-based newspapers taking a large share of the print market, and
radio being the only traditional medium dominated by Irish producers (Flynn,
2017, p 4)
The fact that Irishman Peter Sutherland was the founding Director-General of
the World Trade Organization, a local optimum at least for the Anglo-American
view on economic governance, is telling. Ireland with its vernacular English,
common law tradition and colonial history has been a more receptive home for
Anglo-American discourse than most of mainland Europe. High-intensity of FDI
(Barry and Bergin, 2013), particularly from the US, shapes discourse. With the
benefit of some historical distance, Taylor and Murphy (2002) show this effect
255
in the case of environmental policy making as Ireland built its attractiveness for
international investment in its growing pharmaceutical sector in the 1970s and
1980s. The extraordinary length of the interview granted by Apple’s chief Tim
Cooke to the country’s agenda-setting morning radio news show and the soft
nature of that interview, in contrast to the programme’s usual style, is a recent
example of such influence (Graham and O’Rourke, 2019). A survey experiment
on how the framing of the corporate tax debate by the news media changes
readers’ views shows that such media effects can have dramatic consequences
(Kneafsey and Regan, 2019). How the discourse in Ireland is complicated by
multi-level governance is also illustrated in the case of corporation taxation where
even those who want international agreements for a tax floor differ on what levels
of international governance those agreements ought to be made.
The EU has clearly been vital in Ireland’s development and has received a boost
in its discursive power in Brexit negotiations surrounding the UK’s withdrawal
from the EU, with much acknowledgement of the EU’s central role in promoting
Ireland’s interest. The geographic adjacency of Ireland and the UK will mean
the relationship between Irish and EU levels of governance will continue to be
an important part of public policy discussions. During the 2008 economic crisis,
Ireland, used to getting its neoliberalism from English-speaking sources, was
somewhat surprised in getting a bailout, as newspaper columnist Fintan O’Toole
(2010) noted, more akin to ‘Versailles’ than ‘Marshall’ from the EU. Clearly, the
compromise of the European model was dominated by its German ordoliberalism
and the discourses of its austerity experts (Maesse, 2018). Yet, the openness of
Irish media to international influences, and not just anglophone ones, is shown
in the way, even during the crisis, German actors featured prominently in Irish
media constructions of solidarity (Wallaschek, 2020).
Technocratisation and economisation

Albeit particularly associated with the EU, the problems of how technocracy
and democracy can be harmonised is probably a more general issue and more
to do with hyper-specialisation and problems of unequal access to power
generally than with any habits peculiar to Brussels. However, the power of
technocrats was made particularly obvious in Europe’s response to the 2008
crisis (Sánchez-Cuenca, 2017) and anti-expert rhetoric seems to have been part
of the Brexit debate (Zappavigna, 2019). Yet, both facile tropes and genuine
concerns about the problems of rule by science run deeper than the EU (Hayek,
1945) and are not confined to the left or the right. The media use of experts
has increased substantially since 2000, with social scientists playing a growing
role (Niemi and Pitkänen, 2017, p 357). As Bovens and Wille (2017) argue,
democracies are becoming diploma-based, and so too are more of democracies’
media discourses.
Irish economists have had a good ‘crisis’ with the prominent post-crisis role
of economists at the head of the Central Bank of Ireland, and the formation
256
of the IFAC, IGEES and Parliamentary Budget Office (see Chapters Four and
Five, this volume). This suggests that the power of economists within the Irish
state is rapidly catching up with that of other states where policy has increasingly
been expressed in economics terms (Christensen, 2017). Whether economists
are merely the vanguard of experts more generally, or are particularly suited
to wielding political influence, to date, technocratic power has largely been
expressed in economics discourse. What is clear is that the technocratisation
of media is not only driven by this increasing use of experts as sources by the
media, but also because official sources that are much relied on are becoming
more economised.
Despite, or perhaps associated with, the influence of economics on public
discourse, trust in economists is low. Giles (2019) reports that in the UK,
economists are trusted less than other scientists, albeit a little more than
journalists and politicians. The Brexit referendum showed that the position of
respondents was a major correlate with trust in economists: remain voters trusted
economists at twice the rate of leave voters. Thus, trust in economists seems
in itself an area of politicised disagreement, at least in the UK. Clearly, this is a
problem in a world where we depend on the assessments of others. This is not
merely a problem of the public needing more education, for, as O’Neill (2018)
points out, trust needs to be linked to trustworthiness. The financial crash of
2008 exposed various problematics including how conflicts of interests might
be tarnishing policy advice, technical weakness within both the economics and
media profession and the dominance of neoliberalism within those professions
(Plehwe et al, 2018; Casey, 2019; Rieder and Theine, 2019). All these have been
damaging to trust, with Edelman (2020, p 42) showing only a 1% recovery in
the Global Trust Index this year that masks increases in trust inequality, and a
mere 37% of the public trusting the media in Ireland compared with an average
of 49% internationally.
A traditional way of building trust, or addressing mistrust, particularly regarding
conflict of interest, has been the formation of a profession and more particularly
the adoption of some code of professional ethics. Journalism’s professionalism and
its ethics are threatened by myriad forces, including the participative nature of
technology, the outsourcing of journalists and the increasing financial pressures on
media institutions (Iggers, 2018). Added to these particular issues faced by media
specialisation are the increasing dependence of journalists on all sorts of specialists,
but especially economists, in public policy matters. Alas, economists are having
their own problems with trust and ethics to which they are paying serious
attention (DeMartino and McCloskey, 2016). In this regard, it is interesting to
see that the Irish Economics Association now has a statement that, albeit labelled
as ‘guiding’, stresses some basic ethical principles including obligations relevant
to policy advice (www.iea.ie), although it is also good to see recognition in Irish
economics of the importance of engagement with public demands, beyond codes
of ethics, with interaction across disciplines and with lived experience (McHale
et al, 2017, p 280).
257
Conclusion
A discursive approach not only provides a better explanation of what has been
happening in Irish policy making, but also points to better models of what role
policy analysts and other experts might play in policy discussions and debates,
especially in the media. As a discursive approach highlights the operations of the
public sphere as it is, it naturally points to the various ethical understandings of
that concept. Whereas ethical positions are hard to agree on, being more explicit
in public policy discourse about the role of experts and the media, particularly
as it relates specialist opinion, is important in achieving democratic legitimacy.
A useful step is recognising that discursive interactions are key to what is
happening, and that such interactions are shaping public discourse in media.
Media’s increasing reliance on experts is key to this, and while journalists often
see experts are sources of unquestionable judgments and facts for their stories
(FitzGerald and O’Rourke, 2016), such outsourcing of decision making is not
appropriate in a democracy. Nor is such uncritical use of experts possible in the
age of hyper-specialisation when it is the expert’s assessments that we depend on
and not just the expert’s facts. Public policy analysis is not operating from a god-
like position external to Irish or any other society. Policy analysis is at least partly
about, and should be more explicitly engaged in, producing ‘explanations which
relate to common-sense perceptions, even if this consists of a critique of them …’
(O’Donnell, 1992, p 84). For policy analysts steeped in technocratic training,
it can be hard to unearth the perceptions that underlie their analysis or connect
them to common understandings. Identification of some grand discourses can
help here. Recognising policy analysis as embedded in neoliberal, or Keynesian,
or neonationalist discourses, could be useful in locating and evaluating arguments.
Of course, such labels can be used to dismiss arguments one disagrees with, but
if one avoids this temptation, being able to identify the angle from which an
interlocutor is coming can be useful. The better one knows the perspective of
a contribution, the easier it is to assess the information it provides (Sethi and
Yildiz, 2016). Not only have the media a responsibility to act on this knowledge,
but so do we as policy experts.
A related issue is recognising that policy analysts have vested interests. For users
of policy analysis, ethical codes and declarations of conflict of interest would
no doubt be useful. However, policy analysts and journalists need to be more
conscious of this themselves, in a way that would profit from the traditional
right-wing economics concern about scientism (Hayek, 1945), however ironic
that caution is coming from that most influential discipline of policy elites. Non-
economists rightly point out the disciplinary imperialism of economics and rightly
call for more variety in the type of expertise used in policy analysis. Yet, it is
important for all technocrats to remind themselves that technocrats tend to form a
far from representative cohort of the general population (Bovens and Wille, 2017).
Attempts to overcome problems of representation in policy deliberations
have been advanced in Ireland, with Constitutional Conventions and Citizens’
258
Assemblies aimed at drawing representatives of the general population into

concentrated consideration of sensitive issues (see Chapter Fifteen, this volume).
The design of such mini-publics is important for both the democratic legitimacy
and competence of such policy developments (Harris, 2019). Experience of
such deliberations and specialised analysis of them are necessary for such pro-
democratic design. So again, there is a dependency on experts and expert analyses
informing those design choices in democratising policy discourse. Some of these
experiences may be useful in developing media policy in Ireland.
In a world where there are bad-faith attacks on experts, and self-interested
technocratic calls for more ‘evidence-based’ policy, it would be easy to ignore the
complexities of the relationships between experts and the public, or to pretend
that there is some simple codifiable fix. Academics are all too aware of the ability
to avoid any real responsibility by installing transparency-focused procedures that
ensure that little attention can be paid to substantial decisions. As Baghramian
(2019) stresses, trustworthy experts need benevolence and this is something that
we as a community of policy analysis experts can help build into our discourse,
and seek the cooperation of media players in that endeavour.
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262
Index
Note: Page numbers for tables appear in italics.
A Blackwell, J. 65–8
abortion 179–80, 193 blasphemy 222
absorptive capacity 235, 239 Börzel, T. 125
academic discipline, social policy 39 boundary work 152
academic economists 22 Bovens, M. 256
academic think tanks 159, 166 Boyle, R. 115, 116
Action Plan for Jobs 2013 241 Britain 20–2
Adaptation Councils 28 Brown, T. 38
Adaptation Grants scheme 28 Bruns, A. 254
Administration 35 budget proofing 211
Adshead, M. 127, 129, 130–1 budgetary policy 253
Advisory Expert Committee on Local budgetary process 98, 100–1, 116–17, 181–2
Government Reorganisation and Reform budgeting, gender 210
82 Bunreacht na hÉireann 84
advocacy 173 Burton, Richard 226
Advocacy Initiative 177 Business Committee 97, 194
advocacy panels 223
advocacy think tanks 159–60 C
agencies 53–4 Callanan, M. 79, 80–1, 84, 85, 86–7, 129
agencification 40, 41, 53 Campus Engage 174
Agenda 2020 243 Capital Investment Advisory Committee 26
agenda setting 188–92 Carter, C. 28
agriculture 20, 24, 224 Carthy, John 197
Aims of Social Policy: Reform of Ireland’s Social Catholic Church 34–6, 40
Security and Health Services (Coughlan) 35 CCBS (Centre for Cross Border Studies) 168
America 159, 254 CEDAW 208
Amnesty Ireland 178 Celtic Tiger 6
Anderson, G. 12 Central Expenditure Evaluation Unit 116
An Approach to Social Policy (NESC) 38 Charities Act 177
Ardagh v Maguire 101–2 Charities Regulatory Authority 177
audio media 255 chief executive, council 86
austerity 43, 207 child abuse 40
Aydin-Düzgit, S. 127 Children’s Rights Alliance 42, 178
China 159
B Christus Rex 34
Bache, I. 126 Chubb, B. 197
Baghramian, M. 259 the Church 34–6, 40
Baker et al 41, 43 Citizens’ Assembly (CA) 179–80, 181, 192, 219,
banking inquiry 102–3 220, 221–31, 258–9
Barrington, T. 81, 82 civil service 26, 27, 48–60, 68, 69, 107–19
Barry, F. 25, 26–7, 28 Civil Service Action Plan 118
Barry, U. 211 Civil Service Commissioners Act 49
benchmarking 133–4 The Civil Service Renewal Plan 50, 114
Benefacts 172 civil society organisations (CSOs) 171–83, 207
Bermingham, Brian 87 civil society panels 223
Better Local Government 82 Claiming Our Future 177
Big Data 71 clientelism 27
263
Climate Action and Low Carbon Development CSO (Central Statistics Office) 25, 29, 51, 58,
Act 223 68, 71–2
Climate Action Council 226 and Conniffe 66
Climate Action Plan 226, 227, 230 funding 67
climate change 128, 150–1, 196, 223–7, 230 Culpepper, P.D. 143, 145
Climate Change Advisory Council 128, 223 Curtin, Brian 197
Climate Change: Getting the Process Right 151 CWI 178
cohesion policy 129, 132
Collins, J. 80 D
Collins Institute 166 Dahlgren et al 254
Combat Poverty Agency (CPA) 38, 177 Dáil Éireann 4–5, 93, 94, 95, 97
Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse Daly, M.E. 34–5
(CICA) 40 DBEI (Department of Business Enterprise and
Committee of Public Accounts (PAC) 96, 196, Innovation) 114–15
197, 198 Dean, H. 33
Committee on Budgetary Oversight 97, 98 Dear Daughter 40
Committee on Industrial Organisation (CIO) Deloitte and Touche 100
27–8 demand side 25, 59
committees 96–8, 99–100, 101, 196–8 Denmark 163
Community and Voluntary Pillar (CVP) 142, Deposit Interest Retention Tax 197
150, 175–6 deservingness 41
Community method 126, 127–9 Devaney et al 224, 225, 228
Comprehensive Expenditure Report 2012–14 57 The Developmental Welfare State (NESC) 42, 146–7
Comprehensive Expenditure Report 2015–2017 57 Devlin report 51
‘confidence and supply’ arrangement 199 discrimination 41, 133, 205, 207
Connaughton, B. 128, 131–2, 133 discursive institutionalism 249–50
Conniffe, Denis 66 Dollar Export Advisory Committee (DEAC) 24
Conroy, P. 211 domestic violence (DV) 208, 209–10
Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire Donnison, David 38
(CERN) 238 Donohoe, Pascal 69
conservation, special areas 133 Downes et al 210
Considine, J. 85 Downey, James 82
Considine, M. 130 DPER (Department of Public Expenditure and
Constitutional Convention (CC) 118, 219, 220, Reform) 114, 116
221, 258–9 Dryzek, J.S. 229
consultancies 55 DTTS (Department of Transport, Tourism and
consultation 132–3 Sport) 114, 115
‘contract-based’ model 159 Dublin City Council 89
Control of Manufactures Acts 20, 28 Dukelow, F. 130
Cooke, Tim 256
Copeland, P. 127 E
co-production 152 echo chambers 254
Córas Tráchtála 25 econocentric paradigm 36, 43
Corish, Brendan 35 economic crisis, 2008 256
Cork City Council (CCC) 88–9, 90 see also financial crisis, 2008
Cork Institute of Technology (CIT) 90 Economic Development (Whitaker) 25, 26, 28, 35
corporatism, vocational 5 economic performance 146–7
Coughlan, A. 34 economic policy analysis, building 25–7
Council for Social Welfare (CSW) 37 economic rights 147
councillors 86 economists 22, 256–7
COVID-19 pandemic 2, 183 Edelman 257
Craft, J. 4, 6 Edwards, M. 172
264
Index
EEC (European Economic Community) 35, 37 European Anti-Poverty Programme (EAPP) 38

Eichbaum, C. 110–11 European Commission (EC) 57–8, 243, 245,
EIGE (European Institute for Gender Equality) 253
208 European Community Household Panel 41
Eighth Amendment of the Constitution Act European Economic Community (EEC) 35, 37
179–80, 222, 223 European Employment Strategy (EES) 130
Electoral Amendment Act 178 European Poverty Programme, 1975 37
ELI (export-led industrialisation) 20, 21 European Statistical System 68
Elliott, A. 129 European Union Statistics on Income and Living
Elstub, S. 220, 221 Conditions survey 41
emigration 20, 23 Europeanisation 124–34
Employment Equality Act 133 evidence 63–74
Environmental Pillar 142, 150 expenditure 57–8, 115, 116, 130, 158
environmental policy 128, 131 experts
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) 133 gender 205, 207, 208, 209, 212
equality and media 256, 258, 259
gender 207, 228 export profits tax relief (EPTR) 25, 26
and internationalisation 41 export-led industrialisation (ELI) 19
marriage 196, 222
Equality Authority (EA) 41, 177, 210 F
equality budgeting 211 Facebook 168
Equality Budgeting Campaign (EBC) 211 Fahey, T. 35
equality proofing 211 fake news 254
Equality Proofing Working Group 210 Fanning, B. 34, 36
Escobar, O. 220, 221 Fanning, R. 22, 23, 24, 26
ESRI (Economic and Social Research Institute) farmers 227, 228
28–9, 36, 42, 163, 166, 167, 242 Farrell et al 227, 228–9
budget 165 Featherstone, K. 125
on poverty 38 Feighan, Frank 189, 190
and Twitter 168 Fianna Fáil 6, 35, 188, 191, 193, 197, 199
ethics 257 Final Report of the Sub-Committee on Dáil Reform
EU (European Union) 123–4, 256 101
and gender expertise 203 Finance, Department of 27
Habitats Directive 128, 133 financial crisis, 2008 6, 48, 54, 95, 102–3
Horizon 174, 243, 245 financial incentives 132
Nitrates Directive 133 Fine Gael 6, 35, 188, 189, 191, 193, 199
Peace Programmes 132 Finland 163
policy analysis 242 Finlay, I. 49
and poverty 40–1 FitzGerald, G. 22, 24, 26, 27, 28, 66
secondary legislation 96 FitzGerald, J. 110, 251
Stability and Growth Pact 43 Flynn, B. 128, 133
structural funds 64–5 Fogarty, Michael 36
think tanks 164 FoodCloud 224
Water Framework Directive 128, 133 foreign direct investment (FDI) 20
EU Agency for Fundamental Rights 208 foreign policy 129
EU Semester 182 forests 224
EU Troika 199 Forfás 54
Eurocrisis, 2009 95 Foyle, J. 21
Eurofound 163, 165, 166, 167, 168 frame-critical policy analysis 145
Europe 159 frame-reflective policy practice 145
see also EU (European Union) framing 146, 229
Europe 2020 initiative 130 free trade 24
265
Freyens, B.P. 111 Heclo, H. 3

Fulton report 51 Hess, A. 36
funding agencies 241, 242–3 Hogan, Phil 83
Fung, A. 221, 227, 230 homelessness 182
Horizon 174, 243, 245
G hospitals 189–90
Game, C. 79 in-house think tank 160
García-Rubio, M.A. 229 housing 150, 182
Garvin, T. 22, 26, 28, 34, 35 Howlett, M. 3, 4, 6, 221
GDP (gross domestic product) 6, 163 Howlin, Brendan 191, 195
GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) human rights 40
71 see also IHREC (Irish Human Rights and
Geary, Roy 28, 29 Equality Commission)
gender budgeting 210 hybridity 145, 146
gender equality 207, 228 hyper-specialisation 251, 252, 255, 258
Gender Equality Unit 210
gender expertise 203–12 I
gender experts 205, 207, 208, 209, 212 IGEES (Irish Government Economic and
gender mainstreaming 134 Evaluation Service) 43, 55–6, 58–9,
Gender Recognition Bill 98 69–70, 115–16, 119, 242
generalist model 68–9 IHREC (Irish Human Rights and Equality
generic controversies 145 Commission) 174, 207, 211
Germany 159, 196 IIEA (Institute of International and European
Giles, C. 257 Affairs) 165–6, 167, 168, 242
global financial crisis, 2008 6, 48, 54, 95, 102–3 Immigrant Council of Ireland 42
Global Go To Think Tank Index 158–9, 165, 167 independent TDs 192
globalisation 71, 255 India 159
Goodwin, S. 3 Industrial Development Authority (IDA) 25
governance 129, 205–6, 256 industrialisation 7, 19, 20, 27–8
and climate change 226, 230 Industry and Commerce, Department of 27
digital era 59 inquiries, role of 101–3
environmental 131 Insight Centre for Data Analytics 241
local government 81 institutionalism, discursive 249–50
networked 5 interest group dialogue 146
statistical 72 International Labour Organization 203
government think tank 160 International Local Autonomy Index 85–6
Great Recession 6 internationalisation 5–6, 40–1, 255–6
Great Western Greenway project 90 interpretive policy analysis 149
Green Party 191 Investment in Education (OECD) 36
greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions 224, 225, 227 Iona Institute 166
Griliches, Z. 240 IPHI (Institute of Public Health in Ireland) 166,
guillotine power 97 167, 168
Ireland’s Five-Part Crisis 149
H Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) 37
Habitats Directive 128, 133 Irish Economics Association 257
‘hard’ EU policy influence 124, 126 Irish Feminist Network 211
Harris, C. 220 Irish Fiscal Advisory Council (IFAC) 43,
Hart, P. 162 112–13, 253
Harvey, B. 176, 177 Irish Human Rights Commission 41
Hayek, F.A. 251 see also IHREC (Irish Human Rights and
Hayward, K. 127 Equality Commission)
health care 189–90 Irish National Action Plan against Poverty 41
266
Index
Irish National Organisation of the Unemployed Learning and Development Framework 70

38 Lee, J. 21, 22–3, 25, 26, 27, 85
Irish Research Council 174, 241 Legislative Analysis Service (LAS) 100
Irish Social Policies: Priorities for Future Development Lemass, Seán 25, 26
(NESC) 38 Leonardi, R. 132, 133
Irish Social Policy Association 39 Library and Research Service 100
Is Féidir Linn 177 Lindquist, E. 221
ISI (import substitution industrialisation) 19, 21, Little, C. 223
23, 24, 30 lobbying 167, 178
Istanbul Convention 209 local government 79–90
Local Government Act 1991 82
J Local Government Act 2001 83
Jacobsson, Per 21 Local Government (Ireland) Act 81
Joint Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Local Government (Planning and Development)
Crisis 102–3 Act 81
Joint Committee on European Union Affairs 96 Local Government Reform Act 83, 85
Joint Committee on Justice, Defence and Local Government (Temporary Provisions) Act 81
Equality 98–9 Lynch, P. 26
Joint Committee on the Future Funding of Lynch et al 24–5, 26, 95
Domestic Water Services 98
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action M
(JOCCA) 225–6 MacCarthaigh, M. 55, 94, 107, 241
Jones, C.I. 240 MacFeely, S. 132
Jones, K. 34 Mair, P. 191
Journal of the Social and Statistical Inquiry Society of Mallow Development Partnership 90
Ireland 34–5 marine renewable energy (MRE) 133
journalists 257, 258 marriage equality 196, 222
justice 207, 221, 224, 228 Marshall, A.H. 79
justifications, local government 80–1 Martin, Micheál 191
Martin, S. 98
K Mayo County Council 89–90
Kaim-Caudle, P. 34 McCarthy, C. 118–19
Kaliber, A. 127 McGann, J.G. 160–1
Katz, R.S. 191 media 249–50, 252–5, 256, 257, 258, 259
Kennedy, K. 29 Meenan, James 23
Kennedy et al 21 micro-data 67, 71
Kenny, Enda 189 micro-targeting 254
Kerins, Angela 198 migration policy 129
Kirby, P. 177 Millgram, E. 251–2
knowledge spillovers 235, 239, 240, 241 mini-publics 220, 221, 227, 229, 230, 259
Kunz, R. 203, 204 Misuse of Drugs (Amendment) Bill 98
Mitchell, Jim 197
L Modernising Government – The Challenge for Local
Labour Party 35, 191, 196, 199 Government 83
Ladner et al 85 More Power To You 86
Ladrech, R. 124, 126 Murphy, C. 255–6
Laffoy, Mary 223–4 Murphy, M. 177
Lasswell, H.D. 47 Murphy, M.C. 127
Law Reform Commission (LRC) 163, 165 Murphy, M.P. 175
LCDC (Local Community Development Murphy et al 178
Committee) 85 Murray, C. 107
learning, policy 131–2 Murray, J. 107–8, 115, 119
267
N OECD (Organisation for Economic

National Anti-Poverty Strategy (NAPS) 130–1 Cooperation and Development) 36, 40,
National College of Ireland 34 56, 100–1, 116–17, 148, 160, 182
National Competitiveness Council 54 O’Gorman, R. 223
National Consultative Committee on Racism Oireachtas 4, 93, 94, 95, 96, 102, 103
and Interculturalism (NCCRI) 41 and PBO 100
National Development Plan 2000–06 210 and PLS 98
National Disability Authority 41 Olsen, J.P. 125
National Economic and Social Forum (NESF) O’Mahony, C. 25, 26–7, 28
41, 65, 142, 176 O’Malley, E. 21
National Employment Action Plan 133–4 OMC (Open Method of Coordination) 124,
National Mitigation Plan 223 126, 130–1
National Risk Assessment 56–7 O’Neill, O. 257
National Women’s Council of Ireland (NWCI) online media 254
174–5, 179–81, 211 Open Society 177
Naughten, Denis 189, 190 Organisational Capability Reviews (OCRs)
NCPP (National Centre for Partnership and 113–15
Performance) 142 O’Riordan, J. 111
neoliberal policies 6, 39, 251, 252, 257 O’Rourke, B.K. 251
NERI (Nevin Economic Research Institute) O’Toole, Fintan 256
166
NESC (National Economic and Social Council) P
12–13, 37–8, 42, 112, 130, 141, 142–52, PAC (Committee of Public Accounts) 96, 196,
176 197, 198
on benchmarking 133 Panke, D. 125
on EU 128, 131 Paraskevopoulos, C.J. 132, 133
NESC Strategy 143 Parental Leave Act 133
NESDO (National Economic and Social Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO) 100, 101,
Development Office) 142 117
network knowledge 151–2 participants 227–8
Networked Developmental State 146 partnership 132
networked governance 5 see also social partnership (SP)
Nevin, Donal 37 Pautz, H. 162
New Foundations Grant 174 Peace Programmes 132
new politics (NP) 171–2, 178–9, 188 People’s College 34
new technologies 254–5 Phillips, R. 3
NGOs 42, 128, 133, 142, 147, 203, 224 Phillips, S. 203
Niblett, R. 158 Pobal 178, 183
Nimbus Centre 90 podcasts 255
Nitrates Directive 133 policy capacity
North America 159 and CSOs 173, 174, 176, 177, 178, 180–1,
NSB (National Statistics Board) 66, 67, 71, 182, 183
111–12 definition 3, 203
and local government 86, 89
O and networked governance 5
Ó Cinnéide, S. 37 policy learning 131–2
Ó Fathaigh, M. 130 political parties 187–99
Ó Fathartaigh, M. 27 political party think tanks 160, 166
O’Brennan, J. 129 politics 58–9
O’Brien, S. 130 population 21
Observatory on Violence against Women, 208 POSs (political opportunity structures) 175–9
O’Donnell, R. 145, 258 poverty 37, 38, 40–1, 130–1
268
Index
PPNs (public participation networks) 87–9 return on investments 239–41

pre-legislative scrutiny (PLS) 98–9 Rieder, M. 252
President of Ireland Future Research Leaders rights 41, 147, 207
Programme 243 risk 56–7
Private Members’ Bills (PMBs) 97, 181, 194–6 Ross, Shane 192
private rate of return 239, 240 Ruane, F. 110
Programme for Economic Expansion 81, 251 Ryan, L. 21–2, 26
Programme for Government 211 Ryan report 40
Programme for National Recovery 175
Progressive Democrats 188 S
proportional representation (PR) 188 Sabel, C. 13
protectionism 20, 22, 23, 26 Scheme to Support National Organisations
PR-STV 5, 188, 190 174
Prügl, E. 203, 204 Scholten, P.W.A. 47
Public Service Management Act 107 Schön, D. 145
Public Service Organisation Review Group Science Europe 245
51–2 science policy 235–45
Public Spending Code 118–19 Scientific Council for Government Policy
public transport 224 (Netherlands) 148
Puirséil, N. 35 Seanad Éireann 5
self-reflection 145
Q self-sufficiency 22–3
Quinlivan, A. 80 Senior Public Service (SPS) 111
Quinn, B. 85, 90 service-level agreements (SLAs) 176
Quinn, R. 110 Sexton, J.J. 66
SFI (Science Foundation Ireland) 236, 237, 241,
R 242–3, 245
Radaelli, C.M. 124–5, 126 Sharpe, L.J. 80
Ramesh, M. 3 Shaw, R. 110–11
Rediscover Furniture and Paint Recycling single transferable vote (STV) 188
project 89 see also transferable vote (PR-STV) electoral
Rees et al 127 system
reflexivity 145, 152 Sinn Féin 192
The Reform of Local Government 82 situated policy controversies 145
reframing 145, 146, 147 SJI (Social Justice Ireland) 166, 167–8
RegGov 113 Small Advanced Economies Initiative (SAEI)
regional policy 132, 133 238
Regulation of Lobbying Act 178 small open economies (SOEs) 5, 235–9, 244
regulatory impact analysis (RIA) 113 smartphone 253–4
Rehab Group 198 Social and Economic Council (Netherlands)
Reidy, T. 85 148
Reilly et al 133 social housing 150
Rein, M. 145 social inclusion 41, 130
Report of the Local Government Efficiency Review social investment paradigm 42–3
Group 83 social justice 166, 221
Report of the Special Group on Public Service social media 168, 174–5
Numbers and Expenditure Programmes 83 social partners 142, 147–8, 152
Report of the Task Force on the Integration of Local social partnership (SP) 5, 39, 40, 108, 175–6,
Government and Local Development Systems 177, 193
83 social policy analysis 33–44
research and development (R&D) 235–6, social protection 146–7
237–8, 239, 240, 241–2 social rate of return 239–41
269
social rights 147 Together for Yes 181

Society of St Vincent De Paul 174 Torney, D. 223
‘soft’ EU policy influence 124, 126 transferable vote (PR-STV) electoral system 5,
SoSP (science of science policy) 238, 241, 242, 188, 190
244–5 transport 224
special advisers 110–11 trust 72, 257
Special Areas of Conservation 133 Tuairim 35
specialisation 251–2 Twitter 168, 174, 254
spending, local government 85
Spending Review 117 U
spillovers 235, 237, 239, 240, 241 Ugur et al 240
Stability and Growth Pact 43 UK, think tanks 159
‘Stacy May’ report 26 ultra vires 82
Standards in Public Office Commission (SIPO) UN (United Nations) 13, 40, 203
178 CEDAW 208
Statement on Social Policy (CSW) 37 University College Cork (UCC) 88
States of Fear 40 US, think tanks 158–9
statistics, official 65–8, 71, 72–3
Statistics Act 66 V
Steering Group on Social and Equality Statistics Value for Money and Policy Review (VFMPR)
(SGSES) 67 115, 116
Strategic Management Initiative (SMI) 65, Van Nispen, F.K.M. 47
83 VAW (violence against women) 208–9
Strategic Policy Committees (SPCs) 87 Villaverde, A.R. 229
A Strategy for Development (NESC) 143 Visser, A. 174, 178, 183
Strategy Review Group 191 Vistamilk 242
Studies 34 vocational corporatism 5
subsidiarity 5, 41 voluntary sector 42, 172–3
succession planning 111 Vromen, A. 162
supply side 25, 58–9, 147
survey instruments 178–9 W
Sustainable Development Council 142 Walsh, P. 26
Sustainable Development Goals 13 water charges 196
Sutherland, Peter 255 Water Framework Directive 128, 133
Water Services (No. 2) Act 97
T website usage 168
Tallaght Strategy 188, 199 Weeks, L. 80
Taoiseach 97, 112 Weidenbaum, M. 162
targets 133–4 Whelan, C. 26
TASC (Think Tank for Action on Social Whitaker, T.K. 25, 27
Change) 166, 168 Wille, A. 256
Taylor, G. 255–6 Williams, J.C. 240
Teachtaí Dála (TDs) 93, 94, 97, 99, 100, 189, Wilson, D. 79
190 Wolf, C. 108
Teagasc 242 women, in politics 207
technocratisation 256, 257 Women’s Aid 174
technocrats 258 women’s organisations 207
technologies 254–5 World Bank 203
Theine, H. 252 Wright, R. 108
theocentric paradigm 35
think tanks 157–68 Z
Thomson et al 196 zig-zag 151, 152
270
“This timely volume brings alive the fast-changing world of Irish policy making
through a varied range of authoritative, accessible and comprehensive contributions.
Ground-breaking, it is bound to become an indispensable reference work.”
Peadar Kirby, University of Limerick
Leading Irish academics and policy practitioners present a current and comprehensive study of
policy analysis in Ireland.
Contributors examine policy analysis at different levels of government and governance including
international, national and local and in the civil service, as well as non-government actors such as
NGOs, interest groups and think tanks. They investigate the influential roles of the European Union,
the public, science, quantitative evidence, the media and gender expertise in policy analysis.
Surveying the history and evolution of public policy analysis in Ireland, this authoritative text
addresses the current state of the discipline, identifies post-crisis developments and considers
future challenges for policy analysis.
Features of the ILPA series

• a systematic study of policy analysis systems by government and non-governmental actors
• a history of the country’s policy analysis, empirical case studies and a comparative overview
• a key reference for research and teaching in comparative policy analysis and policy studies
Recent volumes published
• Policy analysis in France, edited by Charlotte Halpern, Patrick Hassenteufel and Philippe Zittoun (2018)
• Policy analysis in the United States, edited by John A. Hird (2018)
• Policy analysis in Canada, edited by Laurent Dobuzinskis and Michael Howlett (2018)
• Policy analysis in Turkey, edited by Caner Bakir and Günes Ertan (2018)
• Policy analysis in Colombia, edited by Pablo Sanabria-Puildo and Nadia Rubali (2020)
JOHN HOGAN is Lecturer in International Political Economy and Irish Politics at the Technological University
Dublin. He is a policy advisor to the Irish government on lobbying regulations and former chair of the
comparative policy section of the MPSA.
MARY P. MURPHY is Professor in the Department of Sociology at Maynooth University. Previously, she served
as Commissioner in the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission (2013-2017). She is currently a member
of the Council of State.
ISBN 978-1-4473-5089-7
@policypress
@policypress PolicyPress
policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk
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9 781447 350897
International Comparative Policy Analysis Forum
and Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis ISSN 2059-0326

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Policy Analysis in Ireland

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INTERNATIONAL LIBRARY OF POLICY ANALYSIS

Edited by John Hogan and Mary P. Murphy

Each volume includes a history of the country’s policy analysis

Volumes in the series include the following countries:

International Library of Policy Analysis, Vol 16

List of figures, tables and boxes vii

one Contextualising policy analysis in Ireland 1

Part One: History, styles and methods of policy analysis in Ireland

two The evolution of economic policy analysis in Ireland 19

six Ireland’s ‘unique blend’: local government and policy analysis 79

ILO International Labour Organization

SPC Strategic Policy Committee

Maura Adshead is Associate Professor of Politics and Public Administration

Richard Boyle is Head of Research at the Institute of Public Administration

Bernadette Connaughton is a Lecturer in Public Administration at the

Pauline Cullen is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology and Politics at Maynooth

Eoin Cullina is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Whitaker Institute for

Fiona Dukelow is a Senior Lecturer in Social Policy at University College

Jason Harold is a Lecturer in Economics at the J.E. Cairnes School of Business

Clodagh Harris is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Government and

John Hogan is a Senior Research Fellow and Lecturer at the College of

Muiris MacCarthaigh is Associate Professor of Politics and Public

John McHale is Established Professor of Economics and Executive Dean of

Chris McInerney is a Lecturer in Politics and Public Administration at the

Mary C. Murphy holds a Jean Monnet Chair in European Integration and is

Mary P. Murphy is a Professor in Irish Politics and Society in the Department

Orla O’Connor is Director of the National Women’s Council of Ireland,

Rory O’Donnell is a Research Fellow at the Geary Institute and an Adjunct

Clare O’Mahony lectures in economics and data analysis at Technological

Joanna O’Riordan has almost 20 years’ experience as a researcher at the

Brendan K. O’Rourke works at the Technological University Dublin, where

policy analysts working in different institutional settings? Contributors focus on

society organisations described by the authors are undoubtedly welcome additions

Contextualising policy analysis in Ireland

• the history, styles and methods of policy analysis;

All chapters are cross-referenced, but each contribution is self-contained. Readers

Some key concepts

Policy analysis traditions, originating in the United States (US), prioritise

Irish governing context for policy analysis

Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), along with United Nations

The content and structure of the book

of a comprehensive examination of policy analysis activities, at all levels of Irish

History, styles and methods of policy analysis in Ireland

In Chapter Four, Muiris MacCarthaigh examines the development of the state’s

Policy analysis at various levels of government: from local to the EU

In Chapter Seven, Bernadette Connaughton explores the historical and

depends on access to knowledge. However, private firms tend to underinvest in

The evolution of economic

largely undertaken by civil servants, with limited contributions from academia

Industrialisation: the Irish experience

Links with Britain

‘political dissatisfaction’ with the importance of Britain in our international trade

Industrialisation without economic policy analysis, 1922–47

Emergence of economic policy analysis, 1948–73

The need for new economic thinking

environment, and domestic economic difficulties as the economy reached the

Building economic policy analysis

Changes in classification and coverage affected the usefulness of the data.

Tensions in policy making

Achieving the shift to export-led industrialisation

The establishment of the Economic and Social Research Institute

Barry, F. and Ó Fathartaigh, M. (2012) The Industrial Development Authority, 1949–

The evolution of social policy analysis