Paul Sweeney
UNIVERSITY COLLEGE DUBLIN
HONORARY CONFERRING
Friday, 5 December 2025 at 12 noon
TEXT OF THE INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS DELIVERED BY ASSISTANT PROFESSOR NAT O’CONNOR, UCD School of Social Policy, Social Work and Social Justice on 5 December 2025 on the occasion of the conferring of the Degree of Doctor of Economic Science, honoris causa on MICHAEL PAUL SWEENEY
President, Graduates, Colleagues, Honoured Guests, and most especially the family and comrades of Paul Sweeney.
It is a rare honour for UCD to confer an honorary doctorate. And it is rarer still for that honour to go to a lifelong socialist.
Paul Sweeney’s family home was across the road from UCD. In the late 1960s, when he was growing up here, fewer than 1 in 6 school leavers went to university, and many young people emigrated every year, looking outside of Ireland for opportunities.
In the end, Paul joined them, and spent four years working in England as a labourer on building sites, as a sales clerk, and as a security controller, before returning to Ireland to study economics as a mature student, reading a Batchelors, and later on completing an MLitt in Economics by research.
Paul worked, first, as a tax inspector, and later as an economist for the trade union movement. Paul also wrote pamphlets for the Workers Party and later was the unpaid ‘Director of Policy’ in Democratic Left, and he provided advice during their time in government, 1994 to 1997.
Fast forward to today, more than half of school leavers go to university, and people from around the world see Ireland as a place of opportunity. So what happened, to change Ireland from being the poorest country in Western Europe to one of the richest?
Paul’s life story coincides with the economic transformation of Ireland, and as Senior Economist with SIPTU and later Chief Economist of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, Paul was at the heart of the economic bargaining and social partnership that helped transform Ireland from a struggling economy to the prosperous, modern, high tech economy, which offers so many opportunities to today’s UCD graduates.
Despite what you might see on social media, Ireland’s economic development was not the work of lone entrepreneurs or billionaire ‘tech bros’. It was the result of long-term thinking and social dialogue between workers, employers and the government. It wasn’t a cozy relationship. Each group fought for their own interests, but the result was industrial stability, strategic investment, and the foundations of our modern economy. It was a democratic process, where people who fundamentally disagreed with one another sat down and worked out a compromise that would allow all of society to move forward in a fair and sustainable way.
This award acknowledges Paul’s contribution to the process of economic dialogue, which led to the modern Irish economy.
Paul Sweeney was in the room for many negotiations, and his analysis was central to the trade union contribution to many social partnership agreements.
His contribution is not just that of a remarkable individual, but of someone who takes teamwork and organisations seriously. I know that Paul accepted this award not as an individualist, but on behalf of the labour movement as a whole.
He has always supported others to develop, whether that was training worker directors for their roles on the boards of state enterprises, maintaining network organisations like the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland, of which Paul was President for three years, or mentoring colleagues (such as me, when I worked in the thinktank TASC). Paul has had a long association with TASC and continues to play an active role.
Paul gave considerable service as a board member of the Company Law Reform Group, the National Competitiveness Council, the National Statistics Board, the Competition and Mergers Review Group, the Electricity Supply Board, the Economic Committee of the European Trade Union Confederation, and as economic adviser to the OECD’s Trade Union Advisory Committee, among other committees.
Paul has never stopped thinking and writing about Ireland’s economy. He is the author of five books and over 100 papers, book chapters and pamphlets, as well as countless internal reports, blog posts and opinion pieces.
Although he would say that he is not an academic, whenever you meet Paul, one of the first things he will often say is “Did you read this or that?” Or he’d start with, “Do you know, I read this paper the other day…” That is what it means to be a scholar; to love knowledge and to spend your life pursuing it. Not because Paul had to, but because he wants to use that knowledge to better understand our economy, so that we can improve it for everyone who lives here.
And Paul has never been afraid to change his analysis, or to admit mistakes, based on up to date evidence, and that too is the mark of a serious thinker.
This honorary doctorate in economics is well deserved in recognition of Paul’s contribution to UCD’s Mission to support the economic life of Ireland and “to advance knowledge, pursue truth and foster learning”.
I’m delighted that Paul’s wife, Anne, and children, Aimee, Ben and Julie, are here today for this special occasion.
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.