Ireland

Abstract

Agencies are a long-standing feature of the administrative landscape in Ireland, but as with many other OECD member-countries, agencification has occurred at an accelerated pace over the last two decades. Agencies have been established in an ad-hoc manner across various policy fields and with wide variation in size, function, legal status, autonomy and accountability arrangements. On foot of research undertaken by the Institute of Public Administration (IPA), the pace of Irish agencification, and more specifically the issue of coordination and control of national (and sub-national) agencies by their parent departments, has become recognized as an area in need of much greater attention. Research published, based on the COBRA survey, has been influential in the Irish Government’s approach to agencies in recent years and has provided the basis for new approaches to agency management and rationalization.