The curious case of lobbying in Ireland: an introduction

Interest groups play a central role in Irish society by theoretically acting as a conduit between citizens and the government. Interest groups are, however, much more than simple conduits and lobby in the expectation that they will receive some tangible benefits for their efforts. In that context, the access and expectation such groups have to, and on, Irish policymakers can be of great significance for policy outcomes in the Irish state. Interest group activity in Ireland spans numerous strands and can be identified on three levels: social partnership, where sectional groups, such as trade unions, employers and farmers’ interests, had central roles on the economic governance of the state between 1987 and 2009; cause advocacy, where groups attempt to influence policy outcomes in specific areas; and private lobbying, where a feature of policymaking in Ireland in recent years has been the increasingly vigorous lobbying on behalf of business or private interests, in an attempt to influence specific government policy. The aim of this special issue of the Journal of Public Affairs is to shine some light on the opaque and curious practice of Irish style lobbying. The question of access to decision making is crucial to interest group politics in Ireland. Once that access has been granted, interest groups develop an expectation that because they are inside the inner sanctum of power, governments will somehow do their bidding. The truth as the articles in this special issue makes clear is somewhat more circumspect. Social partnership was the behemoth bywhich the Irish state governed itself from 1987 to just after the economic tsunami hit Ireland in the second half of 2008 when the financial crisis saw the Irish banks literally run out of money and having to be rescued by the infamous bank guarantee scheme. As Peter Stafford points out in his forensic examination of the structure and process of social partnership, the truth was that the real work was done by a small set of people, while many of the members of both unions and employers remained sidelined on the fringes of power. Over 20 years of social partnership led, however, to a corrosion of intellectual thinking in Irish policymaking whereby no one in power seemed to have even the slightest idea of what to