Industry and Policy in Independent Ireland, 1922-1972

Abstract

Abstract This book revisits the history of industry and the evolution of development policy in independent Ireland from the birth of the state to the eve of European Economic Community (EEC) accession. The Irish Free State was predominantly agricultural at its establishment in 1922. Industrial development was high on the nationalist agenda of all of the newly established European states of the inter-war period, as would later be the case across the entire developing world. Despite decades of protection, Ireland remained under-industrialized when it joined the EEC in 1973. Over the previous decade-and-a-half however the foundations of later convergence had been laid. Ireland was an early adopter of what would come to be known as dual-track reform. The policy of attracting outward-oriented foreign direct investment (FDI) was initiated before substantial trade liberalization began. By 1972 there had been a significant diversification in exports and export destinations and in the nationality of ownership of the leading companies. In these and other respects, the foundations of the economic progress that would be made over the course of EEC membership were already discernible, notwithstanding the post-accession collapse of most protectionist-era businesses. The analysis is supplemented by a unique firm-level database that allows for the identification of the leading manufacturing employers throughout the decades and extends by some fifty years the period for which estimates of the significance of foreign-owned industry can be provided.