PANEL RESPONSE: FISCAL POLICY - Taxation, Reform, and the Commission on Taxation and Welfare

Abstract

It is a great professional and personal privilege to be invited to participate in this event honouring Patrick Honohan. Patrick is something of a renaissance figure in the scale, breadth, and depth of his contribution to the Academy and to public life, in Ireland and internationally. There are few in the Academy who can cross from the groves and towers of academia to ascend to the pinnacle of policy and public life. Patrick has done so with his signature distinction, intellectual heft, generosity of spirit, and commitment to the public interest. And although we are here in the magnificent Royal Irish Academy which Patrick has served with such distinction, I dare to claim Patrick as “one of our own” at my own institution, the London School of Economics and Political Science (albeit Patrick was the “one that got away…”). Patrick is an MSc and PhD alumnus of LSE. But more than that, his career is a shining exemplar of LSE’s motto – “rerum cognoscere causas” (“to know the causes of things”) – and founding purpose – “for the betterment of society”. Patrick, it is a source of immense personal and institutional pride, as an LSE academic, to be here to honour you today.