Cois Coiribe: Can you introduce yourself and tell us about your role at Ibec?
Danny McCoy: Ibec is the Irish business and employer confederation. We’re the largest business representative organisation and lobbying organisation in Ireland. We’re also the biggest of our kind in Europe. Ibec is a €41M turnover business with over 300 staff, 39 brands and 10 locations. Regarding our interface with government, we’re the lead social partner in the Labour Employer Economic Forum. I’ve been the CEO there for the last 14 years.
CC: You have played an influential role in a range of professional environments, from the lecture hall to the European Commission. What is it that motivates you the most in your career?
DMC: One of the main things that my experience as a student at University of Galway in the 1980s offered me was the time to build an analytical framework. In my case, that was delivered through economics. lean on that framework for any situation, be that professionally or in my private life. That education conditioned me to have a perspective, and a consistent and coherent framework on which that perspective can operate. The real strength of being an alum was in having that framework at the start of my career, and it’s taken me all the way to all of these places you’ve mentioned. Every single day, I lean on that foundation. And I can see it; it’s very structural and tangible to me.
CC: You have referred to Ireland in the past as the world’s most globalised nation. What kind of new advantages and challenges does this bring?
DMC: Ireland has become the most globalised nation on earth, and the main driver of that has been the business community in Ireland which is disproportionately large for a population of just over 5 million people. The advantages of that globalisation is that it provides Ireland with a living standard that is ranked among the top nations in the world. We’re comparable to Luxembourg, and the premise on which that business model has been based is the educational attainment delivered by universities such as University of Galway.
This has been transformational in the last generation, and we are now harvesting the seeds of that particular investment from 30 years ago. So, it’s really important that the investment is continued. One of the features in our lobbying is to say that the state has become too small for the scale of the private sector, and we need to fund our universities and our ecosystem to quickly underpin this prosperity that we have. That’s one of the main aims of Ibec in the upcoming budget.
CC: In your view, what are the main factors that blinker industries in driving sustainable development?
DMC: Going back to my academic past, I lectured in environmental economics at London and Oxford, before coming back to Ireland. I’ve continued to teach environmental economics over the last 30 years; the one feature that I see blinkering us is that people don’t fully understand the science of climate change. There are people who are unfamiliar with the science behind carbon, yet talk about carbon issues as if they have full knowledge. And none of their actions are consistent with their professed values.
So, there is a huge disconnect right across our society, not just in business, but also in universities and society generally. People say that they want a net-zero carbon economy by 2050, 50% reduction by 2030. It’s not happening; emissions are actually rising. We’re nowhere near a reduction, and certainly not that scale of reduction. And so, there is an ignorance of what is involved and I think we [need] to bridge that gap – which is a function of universities and of leaders more generally being realistic. People have to be confronted with reality. It’s not enough to say, “I’m for sustainability.” Your actions have to be consistent with your professed values, and right now, there is a cynicism where people profess to have values but are not willing to pay the price.
CC: You’ve talked in the past about sustainability virtue signalling as a kind of avoidance technique among businesses. What distinguishes virtue signalling from true sustainable action?
DMC: There is an Oscar Wilde quote: “What is a cynic? A person who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.” That particular mantra could equally apply to the values that people profess to have about the environment [despite their] unwillingness to be confronted with any price.
What is even more cynical than virtue signalling is the unwillingness to have your budget reflect your values. Don’t tell me what your values are; show me your budget. As a mature society led by our universities, we need to actually make those connections. It’s not enough to say that we have a friendly and open society; we have to actually underpin that with resources. Here in Ireland, we have allowed the state to shrink before our eyes. We have private affluence developing in coexistence with a public squalor. True prosperity calls for a balance between public and private sector.
CC: As a University of Galway alum, how does it feel to be back on campus? Do you see a big change in the university, especially given the recent rebrand?
DMC: It’s a pleasure to visit the university. So much of it is familiar and enduring in terms of the buildings and the atmosphere, but I’m also struck by the modernity and dynamism. The scale of opportunities that are now offered to a much wider cohort of society compared to that of the 1980s, when I was there. I’ve lived through three brands: University College Galway; NUI Galway (National University of Ireland Galway) and University of Galway. Gladly, I’m not old enough to remember it as Queen’s College, Galway. I think this particular brand is by far the best. University of Galway has that duality of continuity and heritage within a modern, global university. I think the branding is superb; rooted in Galway as a university town, while also stating its place in terms of universities of the world.
Learn more about Ibec here.
