The Irish Department of Finance 1959–99 by Ciarán Casey

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Irish Department of Finance 1959–99 by Ciarán Casey John O’Hagan (bio) Ciarán Casey, The Irish Department of Finance 1959–99 (Dublin: Institute of Public Administration, 2022), 239 pages. The Department of Finance commissioned this book in 2019, to be published in the centenary year of the State, 2022. The first such history, by Ronan Fanning, had been published in 1978, covering the period 1922 to 1958. It took eight years to produce, and it ran to over seven hundred pages. Ciarán Casey was given full access to the Department’s archive for the period, comprising around 100,000 files. The plan of the author was to write the book in such a way that it would interest both the specialist and nonspecialist and be as readable as possible. Several former officials and ministers were interviewed, to add context and colour. ‘In an implausible stroke of good luck’, Casey argues, Sean Cromien kept a huge volume of written diaries during his time as Secretary, 1987–1994. The Department established an advisory group of six people with relevant expertise to assist with the preparation of the book. As such, this is a thoroughly researched treatise, which is reflected in the meticulous referencing of sources; for example, one chapter alone has 130 footnotes. It is also a beautifully presented book. Minister Paschal Donohoe when launching the book argued that it was not only a fine record of the economic history of Ireland over the period, with the role of the state – and the Department of Finance in particular – a key focus, but it is also a ‘great read’, with a lightness of prose and some great ‘stories’. The economic history is quite well known to many people in economics. At times it was in fact almost ‘painful’ to be reminded in such detail of this economic history, especially of the 1980s, a very low decade for the Irish economy. Casey draws on several excellent sources to recount this economic history.1 This review though will concentrate on what is new, to me at least, namely the ‘stories’ mentioned by Minister Donohoe, as many are not only amusing but in a strange way informative. Chapter 1, ‘The Loneliest Job in Government’, provides a fine overview of economic performance, and the structure, culture, expert knowledge and role of the Department, the ministers for finance over the period, the civil servants and external engagement. One interesting point made is that, with few exceptions, speeches and letters from the ministers were drafted by officials and hence that it is extremely difficult to disentangle what ministers believe. Is this still true today? There is a very nice discussion then of the relationship between ministers and secretaries. There is one ‘gem’ also, relevant to this [End Page 134] winter’s problems in Ireland and the rest of Europe. After the 1973 oil crisis, a circular was sent to civil servants encouraging them to wear more clothes, use hot water sparingly, and to avoid excessive ventilation! Another interesting fact noted in the book is that Ireland inherited the British tradition of the generalist civil servant. In the case of Britain this contributed to a pronounced disdain for specialist knowledge, and economists were kept ‘on tap but not on top’, a situation not dissimilar to recent times there, especially in relation to Brexit. This explains why even by 2010 in Ireland less than two per cent of staff in the Department of Finance were economists, compared to forty per cent in the Dutch case. Casey interestingly notes that while the Department of Finance had unparalleled power over other departments, it was still at the mercy of cabinet decisions, where the minister of finance was often extremely isolated. One wonders to what extent this still applies today. Chapter 2, ‘Sacred Cows’, runs to fifty-two pages, and it is hard to discern why this title was chosen, as indeed is also the case with the titles of the remaining chapters. This chapter in essence covers the 1960s and examines the impact of T. K. Whitaker’s Economic Development, economic programmes, the free trade versus protectionist debate prevalent then, foreign direct investment, gender inequality, fiscal...