Born: April 15th, 1942.
Died: June 26th, 2025.
Dermot McAleese, the economist and inspirational academic who played a significant role in public policy in the 1980s and 1990s, has died aged 83.
McAleese was the Whately Professor of Economics at Trinity College Dublin from 1979 to 2004. He believed that the role of an academic extended beyond the ivory tower of university life and had to contribute to the public good, however.
READ MORE
In an interview following his retirement, McAleese said, “economic growth helps people, as it makes for a better life. In my lifetime, I have seen a huge improvement in living standards. I believe economists have a role in making that happen.”
It was in his role as director of the Central Bank between 1979 and 1996 that McAleese arguably made his greatest impact.
The Irish economy enjoyed a rare spurt of growth in the early 1970s, mainly on the back of admission to the European Economic Community (EEC) combined with a benign global backdrop. But the oil shock in the mid-1970s caused inflation to spike, and unemployment rates in Ireland soared.
The economy deteriorated further during the 1980s as ballooning debt and fiscal deficits gave Ireland the characteristics of a developing country, rather than a fully paid up member of the EEC.
McAleese was one of handful of economists who argued for a radical shift in direction. As a director of the Central Bank, he was in a position to shape public policy. This paved the way for a series of reforms in the late 1980s and early 1990s that presaged the economic boom later that decade.
McAleese was born in Booterstown, a middle-class suburb of south Dublin, in 1942. One of three children, two boys and a girl, tragedy struck when his brother Brendan died as an infant in 1949.
He went to school in the Jesuit-run Belvedere College before entering University College Dublin in 1959 to study commerce. It was his intention from a young age to pursue a career in business; he was particularly interested in the retail sector.
During his degree, however, he developed a passion for economics. When forced to make a choice during his final year, he opted to extend his studies following an offer of a full scholarship to complete a two-year masters in economics. His supervisor was Prof Paddy Lynch, who was a good friend of Conor Cruise O’Brien, which led to McAleese’s next career move.
O’Brien was the vice-chancellor of the University of Ghana, and he arranged a junior lecturing post for McAleese at the college. His two years in Ghana from 1964 to 1966 bestowed on McAleese a lifelong interest in development and aid.
However, he knew that he would need a PhD to forge a meaningful career in academia. From Ghana he went to Johns Hopkins University, an elite college in the US. The subject of his PhD was the role of protectionism in developing economies.
McAleese returned to Ireland in 1969 and joined the Economic Research Institute, which would eventually become the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI). It was during this period that he befriended Louden Ryan, the Whately Professor of Political Economy at Trinity College Dublin.
While he enjoyed research, he had also developed a passion for teaching in Ghana.
The third-level sector was expanding in the early 1970s, and Ryan asked McAleese to apply for a teaching post at the economics department at Trinity. At the time a PhD from a US university was in high demand, and so McAleese joined TCD in 1972. He would replace Ryan as Whately Professor in 1979, a position he would hold until his retirement in 2004.
Just as important as with his role in academia, McAleese became very active in contributing to public policy. As well as his role in the Central Bank, he was visiting professor to the World Bank; president of the Irish Economic Association from 1988 to 1990; chairman of the ESRI from 1988 to 1991; and president of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland (SSISI) from 1995 to 1998.
Other positions held at Trinity included pro-chancellor and dean of the faculty of business economic and social studies from 1999 to 2004. Further afield, he was associate faculty at the School of International Management, École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussees in Paris.
Even though he officially retired from Trinity in 2004, he continued his association with the college and continued to lecture in the MBA programme.
He also took up teaching positions in universities in China and Morocco, as well as in France.
His highly regarded textbook Economics for Business: Competition, Macro-Stability and Globalisation, which was first published in 2004, has been updated three times and is widely used in Ireland and internationally.
McAleese said his legacy would be his writing and teaching. “How important that legacy [is] will be for others to judge.”
Widespread tributes from former colleagues and students were paid following his death.
“For me, Prof McAleese was firstly a brilliant lecturer. He brought the real world of economic policymaking into the classroom. When I knew him, in the ’90s, he was an eminence,” said Stephen Kinsella, economic adviser to the Tánaiste and head of the Department of Economics at the University of Limerick.
“He still made time to discuss the big ideas – why is Ireland growing now, what should we do to think through how to spread that prosperity – with undergraduates a little in awe of him. He was a model economist, and I have tried to emulate what I saw in him as a lecturer myself, and now in the policy world also,” he added.
McAleese married Camilla Gallivan in September 1971 and they settled in Blackrock. Camilla would qualify as a barrister, and become a prominent conservationist and member of the Irish Georgian Society. They had two daughters, Emma and Susannah.
McAleese is survived by Camilla, Emma and Susannah, sons-in-law and five grandchildren, as well as his sister Nuala.
