19/01/2010
ESRI@50: President McAleese marks ESRI's 50th Anniversary
In recognition of the important contribution of the ESRI to Irish society since its foundation in June 1960, the President Mary McAleese today welcomed representatives of the Institute to Áras an Uachtaráin. Among those present was Dr T.K Whitaker who, as Secretary of the Department of Finance in 1960, played a crucial role in the Institute’s establishment. The original vision for the Institute has been realised over the last half century in the important research it has undertaken into the key social and economic challenges facing the nation. The current staff of the Institute present at the reception were led by the Institute’s Chairman, Mary Finan, the current Director, Frances Ruane and former Directors, Kieran Kennedy and Brendan Whelan, as well as members of the ESRI Council.
During this year, the ESRI will hold a number of special events to mark the anniversary, including two major lectures to celebrate Dr. Roy Geary, (the Institute’s first Director and the Ireland’s leading statistician in the 20th century) and a series of policy conferences.
While possibly best known for its Quarterly Economic Commentary and its Medium Term Review, the Institute has produced over two thousand research papers and reports on the key economic and social challenges faced by Ireland over the past five decades. Its research on labour market interventions, migration, quality of life, education, health, income inequality, competitiveness, taxation, energy and the environment has provided evidence to inform policy in these major areas. Institute researchers have also provided direct advice to government departments and agencies on policy formulation.
The Institute’s role in providing training for well over two hundred young researchers, who have subsequently gone on to careers in academic life, in governmental organisations, and in the private sector, has contributed greatly to the development of expertise in the social sciences in Ireland. Before PhD programmes in economics and sociology were available in Ireland, the ESRI provided fellowships for Irish graduates to study for postgraduate degrees abroad in economics and sociology.
The inception of The Economic and Social Research Institute can be fixed as 24 June 1960, the date on which the Institute – then known as the Economic Research Institute (ERI) – was first legally incorporated. On the same date, the Ford Foundation in New York approved a grant of $280,000 to fund the new Institute for its first five years. A decisive influence on setting up the ERI was T. K. Whitaker, then Secretary of the Department of Finance, who in the course of preparing the major study, Economic Development, had identified the need for research on the Irish economy. Good data were available from the Central Statistics Office but these needed to be subjected to analysis using up-to-date quantitative techniques. It was considered desirable that this research be done outside the civil service in a setting free from government or political influence. The Irish Government committed to finance the Institute at the end of the Ford Foundation funding. The importance of the Ford Foundation contribution lay not only in providing initial funding, but also in establishing an independent constitution for the Institute, which has been preserved ever since.
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