Professor Alan Barrett:

The Department of Finance objected, at the time, to us publishing it. I can develop the point even though I have given a simple answer.

I will take a second stab at explaining. As much as 98% of what we do is analysing data sets. We do not sit around all day theorising about market economies, Marx and all those sorts of things. Typically, we get a data set and then we figure out what the data is telling us about whatever issue. Let me give the example of a policy evaluation of the back to education allowance. In that case one has data and one tries to hammer it out.

Everything that comes out of the institute is peer reviewed. That means two or three people within our building will read people's work. We often send it to outside reviewers as well and say, "Is the analysis of the data up to a good standard and are people drawing the correct conclusions on the basis of the results, as presented?" I cannot give the committee a cast iron 100% guarantee that everything is always kosher because people are human. People can make mistakes in data analytics and people's interpretations can go wrong. What I can say is that the institute has tight quality control devices to make sure that the analysis of the data and the presentation is as truthful as can possibly be imagined, which to me is pure. We are not funded by any particular people on the left or the right. We are, on occasion, criticised with people saying, "You are funded by the State so that must mean the institute is at its beck and call". To explain, I refer to the back to education allowance or the publication of Morgan Kelly's paper. I always have the view that the institute does not set out to annoy anybody in Government circles. I always think that there is something healthy about being criticised because if we did not fall out with Departments periodically, and if they did not like what we said, then we would not be doing our job. The Department of Social Protection has accepted what we have done. Various agencies over time, if one produces results that are very critical of them, tend not to be too pleased, needless to say, but that is the institute doing its job.