Journal of European Integration History – Revue d'histoire de l'

84Dermot Keoghbusiness and agribusiness circles had an influence on senior civil servants and theimpetus for change came from within what would have been commonly regardedas the citadel of conservatism – the Department of Finance. 12Dr Ken Whitaker, appointed secretary of the Department of Finance at the ageof 40 in 1956, has been duly credited with leading the drive for change in economicpolicy in the years leading up to the application for full membership of the EEC in1961. 13 But the significance of that policy decision is better understood in the contextof the rearguard hostility to a departure from protectionism which was veryevident within the Department of Industry and Commerce and elsewhere. ProfessorBrendan Walsh correctly argues that “the formal end of the era of protectionism inIreland was signalled by its first application for membership” of the EEC. 14 Files inthe Department of Finance – which were not available to Prof. Walsh when hewrote the above – confirm that view. 15The Minister for Industry and Commerce, Seán Lemass, authorised the publicationon 21 November 1958 of the 250-page study, Economic Development underDr T.K. Whitaker's own name. Completed six months before, many of the ideas inthat study were adopted by the government White Paper, Programme for EconomicExpansion which had already been published on 11 November. Both documentshad a significant influence on the changing of the fundamental orthodoxies of Irisheconomic thinking. 16 Whitaker wrote in Economic Development:“After 35 years of native government people are asking whether we can achieve anacceptable degree of economic progress. The common talk among parents in thetowns, as well as in rural Ireland, is of their children having to emigrate as soon astheir education is completed in order to secure a reasonable standard of living.” 17Seán Lemass, who had chaired the cabinet committee which had finalised thetext of the White Paper, became Taoiseach in June 1959. The implementation ofthose ideas became his first priority in an Ireland in the early 1960s which wasbeginning to show some signs of recovery from the malaise and torpor of the1950s. The establishment of an Irish television station in 1961 did much to expose12. The interaction between civil servants, academics and the business community is an area yet to beexplored by historians for Ireland in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Both Lynch and Ryan were,according to Ronan Fanning, consulted in the drafting of Dr WHITAKER’S Economic Developmentwhich was published under his own name in November 1958 almost simultaneously with the WhitePaper entitled: Programme for Economic Expansion. See R. FANNING, The Irish Department ofFinance, 1922-1958, Dublin 1978, p. 516.13. J. LEE, “Economic Development in Historical Perspective”, in J. F. McCARTHY, Planning Ireland'sFuture – The Legacy of T.K. Whitaker, Dublin 1990, p. 121.14. See B. WALSH, “Economic Growth and Development, 1945-70”, in J. LEE (ed.), Ireland 1945-1970, Dublin 1979, pp. 28-29.15. See, in particular, personal file in possession of Dr T. K. Whitaker which he kindly allowed me toconsult in July 1996.16. This view is not universally accepted. Dr Whitaker has traced the process himself in Interests, pp.55-79.17. Quoted in B. WALSH, “Economic Growth and Development, 1945-70”, in J. LEE (ed.), Ireland1945-1970, Dublin 1979, p. 29.