SSLF Progress Ireland CLG

Progress Ireland originated from conversations between Sean Keyes and Fergus McCullough in the summer of 2023. Sean was finance editor at The Currency, Fergus McCullough was Editor of the Fitzwilliam, a journal of ideas.

As writers and analysts, Sean and Fergus observed that there was a missing voice in the Irish conversation. There was nobody talking about policy for policy’s sake.

There were government funded organisations whose job it was to test policies, and government funded organisations whose job it was to broker policy bargains between interest groups. But there was no organisation whose specific aim was to research international best practice in policy making, and educate the Irish public on best in class policy.

Fergus and Sean were soon joined by Sean O’Neill McPartlin and Luke Fehily. Sean O’Neill McPartlin had founded an organisation called the Better Planning Alliance, which researched and promoted housing policies that had a track record of success overseas. Luke Fehily had worked as a research scientist and was frustrated by Ireland’s approach to science and innovation policy.

Sean, Sean, Fergus and Luke formed Progress Ireland to create an independent, politically unaligned, and credible voice on matters of policy in Ireland. The mission is to link Ireland up with international best practice in policy making.

To achieve its mission, Progress Ireland will have one foot in the global world of policy ideas and experimentation; and one foot in the reality of Irish institutions, laws, and needs. Progress Ireland will look internationally to find evidence-based policy solutions, tailor those policies to the Irish legal and institutional context, and publish the findings of our research in the public square.

Progress Ireland’s goal is no less than for Ireland to have the highest living standards in the world. This lofty goal is achievable. Ireland’s economy is exceptionally strong. Its political system is stable and relatively unpolarised. What’s missing are processes and ideas to turn Ireland’s wealth into concrete policy outcomes, such as, broadly affordable housing, high quality public infrastructure or an innovative university sector.

Since its foundation last summer, the Progress Ireland team has been on a mission to build out its organisation, sign a high-calibre advisory board, find mission-aligned funding, and invest in its policy proposals.

Over the next six months, Progress Ireland will be preparing for its launch. It will live or die solely on the quality of its ideas. So it is investing significant resources and energy into the substance of its policy platform. It is linking up with experts in Europe, the USA, Australia and New Zealand. It is preparing detailed financial models, and speaking to Irish stakeholders about the barriers and obstacles to implementing policy in Ireland.

The next step will be to turn these inputs into outputs. It will produce reports and briefing documents for a variety of stakeholders.

Having produced its “big ideas”, Progress Ireland’s next task will be to introduce them to the public square. Its first job will be to communicate what Progress Ireland is and what it stands for: independence, rigour, and ambition.

Progress Ireland will host a series of events with journalists, subject matter experts and stakeholders. It will produce videos, tweet threads, TikToks and Reels. It will write reports that are persuasive and that are detail-oriented.

In a year’s time, Project Ireland will have succeeded if a broader menu of policies are part of the conversation than is currently the case. If the Irish public square has been enriched by useful, important, and evidence-based policy ideas. It will be successful if educational policy workshops are attended by important SMs e.g. ESRI wonks, there's a measurable increase in the time-frames over which policy is optimised, and ideas feature in other independent reports.