Since Irish independence in 1922, governance structures have been excessively secretive. Political and civil service elites operated on a presumption of secrecy and a principle that the public did not need to know about decisions being taken in their name. In the last two decades, a number of policy innovations have gone some way towards providing for a more open polity. These include Ombudsman, regulation of lobbying, and freedom of information legislation, enacted over concerns about payments to politicians and a series of catastrophic public policy decisions that led to the bailout of the Irish economy by the International Monetary Fund, the European Commission, and the European Central Bank. This chapter assesses the importance of the principle of open government in modern Irish politics. It examines the nature of secrecy, assesses the tentative opening up of government since the 1980s, and analyses the open government proposals introduced since 2011.
Trade in Financial Services—Has the IMF been Involved Constructively?
