John FitzGerald

I ALWAYS had an interest in a wide range of subjects and even pondered engineering before I opted for history and economics at UCD in 1967.

I tried to keep my options open at every possible point. In first year, I chose history, economics, maths and Greek. We had a very good Greek teacher in School - John Wilson who later became Taniste. I always thought that his wonderful sense of humour was never really appreciated in the Dail. I met my wife, Eithne, at a seminar in UCD when she asked all sorts of intelligent questions, and I was impressed.

I went on to specialise in history and economics and found that I preferred economic history.

When I graduated, there was no market for historians and I applied for a number of jobs, including the civil service. I was offered a place in the Department of Finance - I didn't think I would enjoy it, but I did - and they turned me into an economist. Finance was totally unexpected. I worked with a good team of people. You did your work and people listened to you - there was no great sense of hierarchy. I stayed there 12 years and then, in 1984, moved to the ESRI.

I moved for a number of reasons. By that time, morale in the Department was low. The cutbacks of the 1980s meant that promotion prospects were difficult and the whole country was demoralised. Eight economists left that year. My work in finance was interesting but it was fire brigade action - you'd get three days to solve a problem. I longed to do things in greater depth. Also, my wife was running for the Dail. She was already a member of Dublin County Council and if she were elected to the Dail - with three small children - I would need to be able to work part-time.

Opportunities for economists were opening up. Until the 1970s, the private sector had felt no need for economists, and they worked largely in the public sector. The growth of the national debt in the 1980s, however, meant that the lending institutions felt they needed economists to help them understand what was going on, and they started recruiting. When I came to the Institute, we worked on our own research projects. Nowadays, most of my research is done as part of a team. I find working with such a wide range of different people from the ESRI, consultancies and the universities, on different projects, most interesting. I spend six months every two or so years working on the economic review and I work on a range of other research topics. We receive 30 per cent of our money from the Government but we have to earn the rest on contract. It's a compromise between our research interests and what's fundable. Because we insist on publishing everything we do, most of our work comes from the public sector. I have been fortunate in being able to work on things that I'm interested in.

John FitzGerald, a research professor in the ESRI, was in conversation with Yvonne Healy