The Irish State Administration Database

The centenary of the Irish state’s foundation in 2022 will provide an occasion for reflection on one hundred years of change and achievement. There has already been significant focus on the politics and statecraft efforts of the 1916 – 1921 period, but the formal transfer of governing authority to the Irish Free State presents a new chapter in the national memory. The coming year allows us to take a fresh look at the evolution of the public bureaucracy over time, and the shifts in the roles it has played in the functioning of economic and social life in a national and international context. While the politics and personalities of the last century tend to attract most scholarly attention, what often escapes scrutiny is the way the ‘machinery’ of the state itself has functioned, the degree to which its capacity for policy making and implementation have adapted in the context of governments’ changing political, economic, and social ambitions, and the implications for the quality of public governance considered in the light of key principles of efficiency and effectiveness, equity and fairness, responsiveness and accountability.