Professor John FitzGerald:

The ESRI was founded in 1960 to provide independent advice to the Government. Professor Joe Lee in his Ireland, 1912-1985: Politics and Society, commented on the fact that universities were not producing useful research at the time. It was an initiative led by Dr. Ken Whitaker, the then Secretary of the Department of Finance. To guarantee its independence, he sought funding for it from the Ford Foundation. He told me that he discovered that the person responsible for funding in the Ford Foundation served mass in a church in New York. He went to mass and nobbled him after it to get the money for the ESRI. For the first four years, it was totally independent of the Government. That was the intention of both the Government and the Secretary of the Department of Finance.

The ESRI is legally a charity. The Department of Finance took over giving it 100% funding when the Ford Foundation money ran out in the middle 1960s. The ESRI was about 80% funded by a direct grant from the Department of Finance until the late 1980s. Then there were pretty dramatic cutbacks, as we know, and the ESRI chose to survive by looking for research contracts from the EU, other Departments and so on. Today, approximately 30% of its funding comes from grant-in-aid from the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform with the other 70% coming from a range of sources such as public research funding from the EU, SFI, Science Foundation Ireland, Departments and public bodies, with a limited amount from the private sector. The ESRI insists on publishing everything it does without censorship. The private sector is not generally prepared to fund public good research.

The ESRI is governed by a director who is responsible to a council. The council is not appointed by the Government but co-opts its membership. Until the late years of the last decade, the Secretary General of the Department of Finance was always a member of the council. It is now an assistant secretary from the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. The Central Bank Governor has generally been a member. There is a range of people broadly representative of civil society. The council is not appointed by the Government, a provision which is there to ensure its independence.

The Department of Finance has been party to these ground rules. Generally, it has been good to deal with. It understands we kick them and they grin and bear it. There are times when things have been less happy, however.