Civil service post-war policy debates, Department of Finance orthodoxy and the contours of the modern Irish economy

Many share Michael Mulreany’s interest in the processes associated with the outward reorientation of the Irish economy from the mid-to-late 1950s through to European Economic Community accession in 1973. The Irish case is unusual by international standards in the importance accorded to the policy advice that emanated from within the civil service. While much of the historical focus has been on the Whitaker report of 1958, the contribution of which is celebrated in the 2009 work edited by Mulreany, the Department of Finance did not win all of the crucial debates on outward reorientation in which it was engaged. In particular, it had opposed the introduction in 1956 of export profits tax relief, the origin of the low corporation tax regime that remains in place to this day. This paper revisits the policy positions of the Departments of Finance and Industry and Commerce over the post-war decades and traces the foreign direct investment intensity of the modern Irish economy to the outcome of these debates.