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A reappraisal of Joseph Brennan and the achievements of Irish banking and currency policy 1922–1943

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 February 2021

Eoin Drea  and
Frank Barry
Eoin Drea
Affiliation:
Trinity College Dublin and Wilfried Martens Centre for European Studies, Brussels
Frank Barry
Affiliation:
Trinity College Dublin
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Abstract

Joseph Brennan, as secretary of the Irish Department of Finance (1923–7) and chair of the Irish Currency Commission (1927–43), was a pivotal influence on Irish banking and currency affairs. Yet, within the existing literature, his adherence to conservative British norms is seen as providing a ‘bleak prescription’ for the Irish economy. However, such a view ignores the fact that Brennan was far from dogmatic on banking and currency issues and underplays his incrementalist, and often internationalist, approach to the development of Irish monetary institutions. Brennan's actions up to the early 1940s were based on the realities of Ireland's slowly receding economic and intellectual dependency on Britain, a ‘dependency’ often misrepresented in the existing literature as a more primitive, pre-Keynesian, conservative approach. However, rather than acting as a restraining influence on Irish economic development, the policies Brennan advocated enabled Ireland to avoid the instability associated with many smaller, emerging nation states in the 1920s and 1930s. The focus on continuity – which guaranteed currency and banking stability – represented the realities of Ireland's reliance on the sluggish British economy in the decades after independence. Brennan's achievement, in helping to sustain banking and currency stability notwithstanding economic uncertainty, a fragile political environment (and suspicious banking interests), deserves wider acknowledgement.

Keywords

BankingCurrency CommissionIrelandinterwarEuropean Union

JEL classification

N14: Europe: 1913– O23: Fiscal and Monetary Policy in Development N43: Europe: Pre-1913
Type
Articles
Information
Financial History Review , Volume 28 , Issue 1 , April 2021 , pp. 45 - 66
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the European Association for Banking and Financial History

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Footnotes

E. Drea, Research Fellow, School of Business, Trinity College Dublin, and Senior Research Officer, Wilfried Martens Centre for European Studies, Brussels, email: eoindrea@hotmail.com; F. Barry, Professor of International Business and Development, School of Business, Trinity College Dublin, email: barryfg@tcd.ie. This article was prepared while Eoin Drea was an Irish Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow in the School of Business, Trinity College Dublin (2018–20). The authors gratefully acknowledge the constructive comments and suggestions of two anonymous referees. All errors rest with the authors.

References

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National Library of Ireland: Joseph Brennan PapersGoogle Scholar
University College Dublin Archives, Dublin: Ernest Blythe Papers, Sean MacEntee PapersGoogle Scholar
University of Basel Archives, Basel: Per Jacobsson PapersGoogle Scholar

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