We welcomed the Economics Department led by Dr Andrew Dorman from Trinity College down for a workshop on the history of economics in Ireland and how it has shaped our country today. This was headed by Mr Peppard who I am sure pulled all of the many strings and connections he had to get Trinity to come to Pats. It was a really great insight into economics as a national and international problem solver and definitely will influence many more people to choose it in the coming years.
We were introduced to the economists who gave us a run down of how this workshop would go; we would be split up into groups and assigned different departments in the Irish parliament for e.g Health, Education, Defense.We would propose an amount of money to spend on that department in a selection of significant years. We first began in 1923, the first year after independence. Once all of the groups had decided their amount, we would then ask the Taoiseach group what was their final decision. This went on until the present day of 2025.
It was very interesting and surprising to see the difference in what was important then and is now important to the government. After every year, we would see where the money really went as opposed to where we sent it and we got some interesting results. Defence was the highest spent in 1923 and nowadays it would be near the bottom and housing has only been going up in the last few years despite the crisis.
We were quite successful as a government in the early years by keeping inflation low but later on it turned into more of a dictatorship than a democracy with our Taoiseach of 100 years going a bit mad. All in all, we made a go at it and didn’t start any wars which is more than most leaders can say these days.
It was a very fun and engaging workshop which would make me highly look forward to Economics in Leaving Cert.
By Thomas Connell TY
