Additionality and public sector support to Irish industry: some methodological issues

For a number of decades, a significant amount of resources have been devoted to supporting Irish industrial policy interventions. There has, however, been a distinct lack of evaluation of such interventions. Evaluation should consider what would have happened in the absence of assistance. To produce an assessment of this counter-factual involves considering the concepts of deadweight and displacement. Jointly these concepts facilitate an assessment of the additional impact of financial assistance provided by the public sector. Despite the widespread recognition amongst academics and policymakers alike regarding the need to evaluate, the issue of how to evaluate (methodology) continues to be a key challenge. The prime focus of the current paper is to report the findings from the Irish experience of the evaluation of industrial policy interventions. In so doing, the paper reflects and considers some of the key methodological issues in this field of study. The paper highlights that, regardless of ‘what’ is being evaluated, many of the key concepts and frameworks discussed in the context of industrial policy evaluation in this paper are highly transferable to varying contexts.