This book is the product of four decades of teaching and research. What has been clear to me for a long time is that Irish social policy, and its institutional manifestation as a welfare state, is unique. Many scholars have tried to fit the Irish welfare state into one of the pre-existing international models, with limited success (Esping-Andersen, 1990). As this book will show, there is no clear agreement about what kind of welfare state exists in Ireland. The most positive endorsement one can make regarding the Irish welfare state is the stark reality that without its existence half the population would be ‘at risk of poverty’ (Central Statistics Office, 2015: 5). On the other hand it is important to acknowledge that it is a residual welfare state dominated by means tests, with an American style two-tier health service (Wren, 2003), a dysfunctional housing system driven by a culture of property-ownership and asset acquisition at the expense of the poor, who experience over-priced rents and spiralling homelessness (Norris, 2016), and an education system that is religiously and socially segregated.

Given the overweening power exercised the Catholic Church during much of the history of the Irish state, it is fair to say that the welfare state has been a contested ideal in Ireland that against the odds has emerged in the shadows of Irish polity. To quote Dr Johnson's remark about the dog walking on his hind legs: ‘It is not done well: but you are surprised it is done at all’. The Irish welfare state is officially described as ‘hybrid’ and ‘complex’ (National Economic and Social Council, 2005). It is in reality an enigma in search of an explanation. That is the task of this book.

I have been interested in this intellectual project for most of my academic life because the welfare state encapsulates the practice of civic virtue in modern society. I hope the book will bring some clarity to the social policy debate and the importance of the welfare state in the future development of Irish democracy. My personal biography has coincided with many of the debates that have shaped Irish social policy. It has equipped me with some of the sociological insights of the participant observer into understanding the path development of the Irish welfare state.