PROBLEMS IN ECONOMIC PLANNING AND POLICY FORMATION IN IRELAND, 1958-1974. BROADSHEET No. 12, June 1975

Norton, Desmond (1975) PROBLEMS IN ECONOMIC PLANNING AND POLICY FORMATION IN IRELAND, 1958-1974. BROADSHEET No. 12, June 1975. UNSPECIFIED.

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Abstract

In retrospect, it seems that among the deficiencies in Irish economic policy in the early and mid-fifties were: (i) Failure to reorientate sufficiently Irish industry, and to promote services such as tourism, toward export markets after the period of growth via import substitution (the mid-’twenties to the ’fifties) had tapered off, and (ii) Failure to maintain, by fiscal measures, a high level of domestic demand. The extreme openness of tile economy is a feature to be recalled: imports since 1947 have averaged over 40 per cent of GNP at factor cost. Despite import substitution, imports, and the ratio of imports to GNP, had risen between the ’thirties and the ’fifties. In the absence of considerable foreign borrowing (which, apparently for nationalistic reasons, successive governments discouraged) increased demand for imports, necessary for, as well as generated by, income growth, could not be satisfied without placing stress on balance of payments constraints on domestic expansion. Fear of adverse international payments balances was, in fact, the principal rationale for the deflationary fiscal policies of the times.

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