Volume 71 (2023): Edition 2 (May 2023)

This paper employs elite formation quantitative indices to directly and transparently compare the role of the Irish secondary school system in the formation of Ireland’s political and judicial elites, over its history as an independent country (1922–2022). Whereas other elite studies have tended to compare either the same elite formation systems or the same elites, across countries, we examine the eliteness, influence and exclusiveness of one formation system in the creation of two very different societal elites. Our results suggest that the secondary schools that educated Ireland’s superior court judges were significantly more elite and influential than those that educated its cabinet ministers. Additionally, the vast majority of the secondary schools that educated superior court judges, and about 30 per cent of those that educated cabinet ministers, were fee-paying schools, a category of school that constitutes only a tiny fraction of the secondary schools in the country.

In the midst of a seemingly unending economic crisis, the period 1948–58 saw a dramatic expansion of fiscal policy in Ireland. T. K. Whitaker’s Economic Development is traditionally represented as a landmark departure behind this change from traditional Department of Finance thinking and political inertia, propelled by the perceived Keynesian ideas of his fellow younger economists. However, by assessing the policy positions each actor adopted during major economic events of the period, this study argues that Whitaker’s economic outlook largely aligned with Finance’s, and that Economic Development must be viewed in large part as a reaction to the pre-existing fiscal commitments of the public capital programme. In tandem, it concludes that although the influential younger economists of the period are sometimes described as expansionist Keynesians – such as Patrick Lynch, who in the early part of the decade spearheaded Keynesian-type initiatives such as the capital budget principle – by mid decade their views aligned with the more classical economic outlook of the Department of Finance.

Since the 1980s, regional development policy in advanced economies has emphasised the promotion of endogenous development potentials within regions, with local/regional government playing a leading role in the creation of effective governance structures for mobilising these potentials. A key feature of this approach is the adoption of the city-region as the organising unit for pursuing local/regional development. Ireland has not followed this lead, continuing to rely on external investment as the main engine of economic growth and failing to devolve highly centralised functions which could give local/regional government a more effective developmental role. This article argues that the 2012 Action Programme for Effective Local Government proposes a regional structure which is meaningless in terms of city-region development and fails to address the governance weaknesses which inhibit development at the regional and local levels. The action programme therefore ignores international best practice regarding how effective regional development should be pursued.