Tasc (think-tank)

In the late 1990s, a number of people began to put in place the necessary building blocks to create the first ever independent think tank in Ireland. When TASC was established in 2001, think tanks of any kind were a rarity in Ireland and more generally there were few alternatives to neoliberal discourse in the public sphere. At the time, policy-making tended to be reactive, a largely technocratic-managerial concern rather than a political one, strongly influenced by the institution of social partnership and by powerful vested interests, wealthy individuals and elite groups. Public engagement with politics was relatively low with little substantive discussion or debate on matters of public policy. Largely driven by the global influence of the economic right, strong neo-liberal orthodoxies shaped the thinking of those responsible for the making of Irish public policy. As a consequence, few genuinely ‘progressive’ or alternative socio-economic policy debates had been generated over the decades prior to TASC’s arrival on the scene. Thus, even though the 1990s was one of unprecedented economic growth in Ireland, the persistent level of economic inequality and other negative social indicators showed that there was an urgent need to develop a persuasive and coherent intellectual counternarrative.

This then was the environment in which a number of people who had long been critics of the neo-liberal narrative decided to establish a think tank. Along with myself, those who were involved at the earliest stages included Proinsias deRossa, Des Geraghty, Jim O’Donnell, Fintan O’Toole and Prof John Horgan. From a series of conversations over a period of months, the shape of the initiative came into focus as key decisions were taken. One of the most important of these decisions was that the new think tank should be independent of all political parties, albeit clear in its founding statement that its values were those traditionally associated with the political left. We felt that if there was to be a space for genuine new thinking, that it must be possible to involve those who would have an important contribution to make but would not wish to be associated with any one political party. A second important decision was that the organisation should have a formal organisational structure at its base.

Following a planning period, in June 2001, TASC was formally incorporated as a not-for-profit limited company. The original name for TASC was The Foundation for Policy Alternatives. In 2002, it changed to TASC– A Think Tank for Action on Social Change. It is registered in the Companies Office as TASC Europe Studies Company Ltd trading as TASC. I resigned from my position as an academic to take up the full-time role of Executive Director, accountable to a board of three non- executive directors chaired by Des Geraghty with Prof John Horgan and John Curran. A Steering Committee composed of the three Board Directors together with Fintan O’Toole who chaired an Advisory Council to TASC (around 20 people drawn from political and policy sectors including trade unions, NGOs and academics), my two co-founders, Proinsias deRossa and Jim O’Donnell and myself, met regularly for the first five to six years of TASC’s existence and were the critical group overseeing its development in this period. As TASC evolved, this group gave way to a larger Board of Directors which included people who were drawn to TASC’s objectives and impressed with its early achievements.

A step change occurred in 2008, when The Atlantic Philanthropies (who along with the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust funded much of our work on democracy over the years) provided us with a grant to cover our core costs for a five-year period, a grant which was renewed for three further terms of three years taking the organisation to the end of 2019. With this funding, TASC was able to put in place a more sophisticated structure of expert policy staff along with much enhanced communications, funding, governance and administration.

The receipt of this grant occurred just at the time of the cataclysmic economic collapse in Ireland. The recession, combined with the related failures of public governance and regulation, meant that we decided to narrow our focus to address the critical issue of economic recovery, a recovery which we believed could result in a society which was much more egalitarian in nature than anything Ireland had experienced before. In the following years, TASC published a series of papers on macro-economic policy issues and made substantive and costed submissions to the national annual budget process addressing both the fragility of the Irish tax system and the inequalities it generated. We also continued our work on issues of democracy believing that it was essential to demonstrate the connection between democratic accountability and transparency on the one hand and resulting economic outcomes on the other. In 2011, following the publication of a major empirical study of overlapping directorships in Ireland called ‘Mapping the Golden Circle’, I stepped down as Executive Director although I continued my direct involvement with TASC as a member of the Board (and ultimately its Chair) until end of 2018.

A further step change occurred for TASC in 2012 under the leadership of Dr Nat O’Connor who took up the position of Executive Director in early 2011. In the context of a much more challenging external funding environment than had been hoped for, it became necessary to restructure the organisation and to radically reduce the number of staff. Despite the huge challenges which this restructuring created both for individual staff members and for the organisation as a whole, this was a critically important move. Because of it, TASC was able to continue to do innovative and impactful work while allowing the organisation to be sustainable into the medium term. During this time of transition and in the years since then up to and including the present, TASC continues to publish a significant number of research and policy outputs on an annual basis. Over the last two years, TASC has undergone a major period of renewal. Following a long period of Board stability under the leadership first of Dr John Fanning and subsequently of Proinsias deRossa, in 2017 the Board began a process of renewal.

Over the following year or so, many long-standing members of the Board including myself resigned and were replaced by a new generation of directors with the skills and commitment needed to chart TASC’s next steps. In 2017 also, the Board appointed Dr Shana Cohen as its full time Director. Under Shana’s direction TASC has maintained and developed its focus on economic inequality - starting in 2015 TASC publishes an annual report on the status of economic inequality in Ireland - identifying trends and highlighting critical areas for the attention of policy makers. As well as building on established areas of expertise, such as TASC’s work with the Brussels-based think tank FEPS on labour market issues, developed under the leadership of Prof James Wickham, and its work on health inequalities, Shana is taking TASC into a number of new areas of focus. At the same time TASC continues to expand its work on related democratic issues of accountability, often working with other organisations both nationally and internationally.

TASC is now approaching its twentieth year of operation and the core task of moving Irish society to a more egalitarian one continues to be the dominant challenge. If TASC is to be judged on how successful it has been in moving Ireland to being a more equal society, it is clear that it is very much a work in progress. Persistence in contributing to the narrative is key. To quote Joseph Stiglitz, the current state of play is ‘…both depressing and hopeful. Depressing because you can have a really bad idea sold for a very long time. It’s hopeful because you can always hope that somebody will come along and tell a different story, and win a better contest of ideas’. Over its nearly twenty-year history, as an organisation TASC has been forced to reset its course many times. While remaining true to its founding mission it has had to find new ways to finance its activities. In the last couple of years, new staff, new projects and new alliances national and international all provide optimism that such will be found. As it prepares for the next twenty years, under the direction of the tireless and innovative work of its current Director, Dr Shana Cohen and with a highly experienced and committed Board of Directors under the Chair of Mike Jennings, I am more than confident that TASC is well-placed to make an important contribution to telling a different story and to winning a better contest of ideas.