Rory O'Donnell
UNIVERSITY COLLEGE DUBLIN
HONORARY CONFERRING
Friday, 8 September 2023 at 11.30 am
TEXT OF THE INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS DELIVERED BY PROFESSOR MICHELLE NORRIS, Director the Geary Institute for Public Policy, UCD School of Social Policy, Social Work and Social Justice on 8 September 2023, on the occasion of the conferring of the Degree of Doctor of Economic Science, honoris causa on RORY JOHN O’DONNELL
____________________________________________________
President, Graduates, Colleagues, Honoured Guests
The Geary Institute for Public Policy is a centre of excellence for policy relevant research in UCD. The Institute brings together faculty members, researchers, and doctoral students from across the University who research welfare states, health services, education, the economy and the environment among many other issues, to collaborate across disciplines and exchange ideas about how governments can address the key societal, economic and environmental challenges of our age.
Dr Rory O’Donnell’s work has had an extensive and enormously valuable impact on many of the policy issues my colleagues and I at the Geary Institute for Public Policy study. He played a central role in enabling the policy makers in Ireland to address the most pressing, intractable and complex challenges our country has faced in the last three decades. I am delighted that the University has decided to confer Dr O’Donnell with an honorary degree in recognition of this contribution and I am honoured to have this opportunity to tell you about his achievements.
Dr O’Donnell holds BA and MA in Economics from UCD, an MSc in Economics from the University of London, and a PhD in Economics from the University of Cambridge. During his career he has worked in the Economic and Social Research Institute, and as a lecturer in UCD and at the University of Galway. However, it is during the 25 years he has spent at the National Economic and Social Council, initially as an economist, then for 20 years as director of the Council, that his work has impacted most directly on policy.
The Council advises the Taoiseach’s office on economic, social and environmental issues and includes members from non-governmental organisations, farmers and employer representative groups and trade unions. Therefore, the Council’s publications draw on a wide variety of opinions and identify points of consensus between them, but critically they also draw on top quality social scientific research and reviews of relevant policies and programmes in other European countries. In a policy making system understandably focussed on the here and now and subject to the pressures of the political cycle, the National Economic and Social Council provides a vital space for considering the impact of policies over the long term and for big picture thinking about their future direction. As director of the National Economic and Social Council Rory O’Donnell made a central contribution to this important work. He brought to the Council a distinctive mix of enormous intellectual firepower but coupled with the ability to listen, negotiate and identify innovative solutions. This is a rare combination of skills in the policy making system.
The issues examined by National Economic and Social Council reports are numerous and diverse and Dr O’Donnell has written or contributed to reports on an enormous variety of topics. However, I would like to highlight his contribution to three particularly significant areas of the council’s work.
The first of these concerns Ireland’s place in the European Union. This was the subject of the first report he wrote for the Council in 1989, which was prepared at the request of the Taoiseach in advance of the completion of the European Single Market. At that time there was less consensus regarding Ireland’s interest in European integration. This and the many subsequent Council reports on this issue to which Dr O’Donnell contributed were clear that Ireland’s interests lie in the fullest participation in the European Union, but also clear on the need to address the difficulties and challenges associated with integration.
Second, Rory O’Donnell has made an important contribution to thinking on Ireland’s strategic approach to economic and social development. From the publication of its Strategy for Development in 1990 and continuing through this and the following decade, the National Economic and Social Council’s reports emphasised the need for a consistent policy framework covering macroeconomic, distributional, and structural policies. This approach sought to achieve macroeconomic stability and resolution of conflicts regarding distribution of resources in our society without disruption of the economy in a way that is fair and supports social cohesion while also enabling a competitive economy.
Third, since 2014 the National Economic and Social Council has published a very influential series of reports on housing. Dr O’Donnell played a central role devising the strategy these reports propose for addressing Ireland’s seemingly intractable housing supply and affordability. These reports were one of the factors that prompted the government to reverse the strategy of relying on subsidies for private rents to accommodate low-income households and provide more social housing instead. They also proposed that government should support the provision of housing that is rented at cost price. This policy has been adopted and 700 units of this cost rental housing have been delivered this year. In addition, they emphasised the need for the government to take a more active role in the management of land supply for housing and this analysis was one of factors that prompted government to set up of the Land Development Agency in 2018.
Finally, Dr O’Donnell is not only a practitioner of policy making but also one of the foremost thinkers about how we make policy in Ireland and about the capacity of government to make and implement policy effectively. He has written numerous academic articles on these issues, and my colleagues and I regularly draw on these publications when teaching our Bachelor of Social Science to the social policy students who are graduating here today. He has also been a longstanding adjunct member of the Geary Institute for Public Policy and great supporter of our work.
I now invite the President of UCD, Professor Orla Feely to award the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Economic Science honoris causa to Dr Rory O’Donnell.
_________________________________________
Praehonorabilis Praeses, totaque Universitas,
Praesento vobis hunc meum filium, quem scio tam moribus quam doctrina habilem et idoneum esse qui admittatur, honoris causa, ad Gradum Doctoratus in Scientia Oeconomica; idque tibi fide mea testor ac spondeo, totique Academiae.