Towards Improved Policymaking in Ireland:Contestability and the Marketplace for Ideas

Abstract

The current market for policy advice in Ireland is highly cartelised. A more contestable “marketplace for ideas” would afford greater opportunity for good ideas to challenge bad ones and would diminish the power of vested interests, including elements of the political establishment and the bureaucracy itself. Policy weaknesses could have been identified much earlier were the policy-making system more transparent and contestable. By obscuring where policy advice ends and political decisions begin, the strict interpretation of the “doctrine of the corporation sole” facilitates the evasion of responsibility and institutionalises a regime of inappropriate incentives. Greater inquisitorial powers for Oireachtas committees should prove valuable but other incentives within the system also need to be changed if more efficient outcomes are to be secured.