Patrick Lynch (economist)

Patrick Lynch MRIA (5 May 1917 – 16 November 2001) was an Irish economist. He believed in economic development and the co-ordination of government policy, including fiscal, social and monetary measures to invest in education and joining the European Economic Community. He favoured empirical education economics in Ireland and development economics flowing from investment in science.

He was " ... one of the most respected and influential social and economic thinkers during the critical period of the Sixties, when Ireland's economic foundations were laid."

A Professor of Political Economy at University College Dublin until 1980, he was a civil servant for over a decade, served as chairman of Aer Lingus and Aer Rianta and was deputy chairman of AIB Group.

Born in Dublin in 1917, Patrick Lynch was the first-born child of Daniel and Brigid Lynch.

He was educated at Catholic University School, a feeder school for University College, Dublin (UCD). He entered UCD in 1935 to study humanities, at which he excelled. During this time, he was inclined to accept the ideas of Alfred Marshall and John Maynard Keynes.

He joined the civil service in 1941, starting in the Department of Finance and staying there until 1948. After two years seconded as private secretary to Taoiseach John A. Costello, he was appointed Assistant Secretary to the inter-party government in 1950 and he continued in this post when Fianna Fáil attained sole power in 1951. He and Alexis Fitzgerald (Costello's son-in-law) had persuaded Costello to adopt a Keynesian approach to the country's economic policy in 1948, the first major change to Irish economic policy for "a generation", as Murphy phrased it, and one which was achieved despite opposition from both the Department of Finance and the Central Bank.

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