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The Edmund Burke Institute was founded in 1988 in response to the economic crisis which Ireland was then experiencing. After the collapse of the previous boom the economy was badly managed by interventionist politicians and civil servants. Taxes were too high. Public services were poor. Unemployment was so great that it threatened the integrity - even the survival- of many communities. A whole generation left Ireland. The business community looked to state for guidance rather than to their own knowledge and experience. Worse, the media acquiesced in the state's promises and prescriptions which had demonstrably failed. Privatisation and regulation were widely seen as being unthinkable.

Those willing to make the case for the market were few in number and rarely heard. It was in fact the very depth of the crisis which forced policy makers in all the political parties and perhaps more crucially within the civil service into a pragmatic reassessment of their activities. But although the shift towards privatisation spending controls, lower taxation, and a generally more business friendly environment, have played their predictable part in creating the richer Ireland of the nineteen nineties and beyond, the prosperity which has resulted has not changed the intellectual climate - which is still strongly hostile to markets.

In fact market based politics have yet to strike deep roots in Ireland. With rare exceptions the conversion of Irish lawmakers to the market is shallow. Too few Irish politicians and opinion formers have any theoretical grasp of the philosophic and economic grasp of the case for markets. We need only look to their response to the present housing problem to see how fragile is their commitment to the market.

The danger is that any asymmetric shock to the European economy which affected Ireland disproportionately would almost give rise to widespread calls for government intervention in the market with which powerful and well funded interest groups would quickly become associated. In these circumstances only those policy makers who understood the moral and practical reasons for preferring freedom to legislation and regulation would be able to resist the demands for renewed activity by the government. Consequently, the need for such bodies as The Edmund Burke Institute is as urgent as ever.