Governance and institutional change in Ireland

An innovation-driven policy agenda has emerged in Ireland against a backdrop of remarkable economic growth and convergence. Policy makers now recognise that convergence in innovative performance will also be required for a sustainable economic future. Nonetheless, over the past decade, the Irish policy system has been struggling with two significant, and interrelated, innovation policy challenges. The first is to stimulate a national innovation system (NIS). The second is to secure the role of policy in achieving effective links and integration between the elements of the NIS. The failure to link policy elements may simply reflect the early stage of development of the Irish NIS. Alternatively, the problem may be a particular incidence of a wider problem affecting policy, namely the prevalence in the Irish policy system of a culture of strong ministerial autonomy. The innovation agenda may also have failed to gain wide support within government and society. The lack of a shared understanding of the importance of innovation for continued economic growth and of the costs of failure weakens the political imperative for a coherent and integrated approach to developing the Irish NIS. Recent attempts to strengthen elements and interaction within the NIS can be seen as attempts to address these issues.