Professor John FitzGerald:

On that, the model grew out of a long-term collaboration on developing tools between the ESRI, the Central Bank and the Department of Finance. I was in Finance, John Bradley was in the Central Bank - he moved to the ESRI. In the late 1980s, John won a contract from DG12 to develop a model of the Irish economy and it was to be models of each of the EU 12 economies done by contractors. That result was published in a peer-reviewed book published by North-Holland with the editor being the European Commission. It was published along with the models of other economies.

There were various problems with the contract, partly because the person doing the German model did not deliver and one cannot have a model of Europe without Germany. We and the Federal Planning Bureau in Belgium have continued to develop and use the HERMES models. John Bradley, my colleagues and I published a series of articles in a range of peer reviewed journals, which published the background to it. The book was also peer reviewed. There are probably approximately 20 or more peer reviewed articles in academic journals on parts of the model or using the model. During the past four years there has been one on the effect of the corporation tax change in economic modelling, one in the Journal of Environmental Planning and Managementon carbon taxes, two in the National Institute Economic Review, one of which examined fiscal policy over the past decade and the mistakes made. There are many. Finally, a peer review of the ESRI by academics from outside Ireland and some Irish experts is published on the website, and is very favourable in its assessment of the ESRI's macroeconomic work.