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Social science in the land of saints and scholars: Policy research in Ireland
Evaluation and Program Planning, Vol. 11, pp. 161-167, 1988 Printed
Copyright
in the USA. All rights reserved.
0149-7189/L@ $3.00 t .oo “1 1988 Pergamon Press plc
SOCIAL SCIENCE IN THE LAND OF SAINTS AND SCHOLARS: POLICY RESEARCH IN IRELAND
A. DALE TUSSING Economics
Department,
Syracuse
University
ABSTRACT Drawing on the author’s experiences as an American social scientist working in Ireland on policy-oriented research relating to education and health, the paper discusses differences between such research in Ireland and the USA. In general, differences are due to the small size of the country; its lower level of economic development; the lack of a developed literature in the fields in which the author worked; the lack of published data; and cultural differences affecting scholarship, such as the lower level of competitiveness in human relations. In addition, policy-oriented social science research gets considerable media attention in Ireland. The very considerable attention given the author’s work astonished him. The author illustrates the points made with accounts of his own experiences.
reflects differences in the organization of research, and would apply to, say, physics or mathematics as much as to economics or social policy. Under this heading would come such things as the organization of research bodies, funding, and dissemination of results. Another kind reflects cultural differences between the countries, and includes social, political, religious, economic, linguistic, etc., differences. Cultural differences influence not only substance and method but also organization itself. That is, the two kinds of differences interact to produce complex consequences for the researcher. There is a wholly different sense in which research organization and culture interact. The “foreign” researcher, attempting to initiate research in another society than his or her own, must quickly learn the “culture of research” in the new country. He or she must learn to unravel the complexities of formal and informal organization, public and private, and at all levels of government. This is especially urgent if research is to be externally funded. I carried out two major research projects in Ireland, on educational finance and health
This paper discusses some of the differences I have found between social science research as conducted in the United States and in Ireland. I am an American, and have conducted such research in both countries. I hold a tenured university professorship in the USA, and have done most of my research, both unfunded and externally financed, in this country. I lived in Ireland for more than four years (in several periods over a span of 12 years), and conducted large research projects as an employee of an interdisciplinary, not-forprofit research organization. I have concentrated on policy-oriented rather than basic or methodological research. In addition to living in Ireland, I have had a continuing research relationship with that country, and have visited it more than a dozen times. The present paper reflects both my experiences and my observations. In particular, I emphasize the perceptions of a national of one country trying to do policy research in another. 1 found in general two kinds of differences between social science research in the two countries. One kind
The author wishes to acknowledge the helpful comments of Miriam Wiley of the Economic and Social Research Institute, Dublin, who read an earlier draft of the paper, and Martha Wojtowycz of Syracuse University, who also read a draft of the paper and who helped in all stages of the preparation of the manuscript. The author alone is responsible for all errors of fact, judgement, or taste. The author also wishes to thank Pauline Ginsberg of Utica College, Syracuse University, for suggesting the topic and for her frequent expressions of faith that the paper would ultimately be completed. Requests for reprints should be sent to A. Dale Tussing, Economics Department, Syracuse University, 712 Ostrom Avenue, Syracuse, NY 13244. 161
A. DAI.E- TUSSINC;
162
economics, a a staff member of a research organktion, which provided the basic funding; hence I did not ha\c IO seek outside support. However, 1 did ha\e to get out’ in co11ncctiott with the health economics project, and found taisins monq in Ireland to be \er-y different from doins w in the USA. (‘!ne factual difference pervades the follo~~ing discussion
01’ the diffcrcnces
in the USA and !reland:
between that
social of sheer
science size.
t-cseat-ch
Ireland
the jociat science,. sire also int’lucttce\ the object ot research: the underlying society to bc ~tudiccl i\ more complc\, often \,irtually intractably M), in the l:nittxi States than in Ireland. The US health care \ysierii, f’or trample. is w intricate that it atmo\t dcf‘ie< description. c\cept in the mosl general tei-nis; while Ihc Irish itculth care sy5teni i5 not onI> simple enough !o he cic\zi-ibcd but can actually bc coiiceI~tLtali/~~tl ni~nraltq. I hc \;;IIIIC i\ true tll‘ (?I her macros! \tt’nis in t tie (:co wcictic4.
ix ;I
small, tniddle-income country with a popalation of appr-oximately 3.5 million. The I.‘SA i\ a rich and po\ver ful country with a population of 240 million.
difference influencc~ the organization of research. To take one not so minor example, in Ireland one is likely to kno\$, Lirtually e\eryonc working in ottc’s ai.e;t, \vher-ras in the lJSA this i\ often out of the question. In Thi\
ORGANIZATIOK
OF RKSE:ARCH BODIES
There are important differences in the organi/.ation of universitic\ (and other educational institutions) in Ireland and the USA. but these do not appear significantI) to influence the conduct of policy oriented social scicncc research. The same is true of non-academic research institutioiis. Ihe research institute in which 1 worked ~vas not related to any academic instttution, but (unlike an! other such institute in Ireland) it used the title ot “Professor” as its highest rank. Research staff are all members of a trade union (as indeed are all facult), members in higher education institutions). The research institute is too small to engage in collective bargaining on its own; instead, pay is tied to pay in the uni\,ersities, but with a twist. Because institute employees (or so it \\a$ argued) are full-time and have no opportunity to do outside consulting for extra money, they are paid an additional 15ob, above what comparable university faculty members are paid. In exchange, they have to promise to limit their outside consulting work to a minimum. This is a very congenial arrangement for man) institute workers, who Lvould not care to do any extra work whatever the circumstances; but it annoys a handful of ambitious, hard-working staff who disdainfullq refer to it as “our bonus for low productivity.” The research institute has recently acquired a sophisticated state-of-the-art computer system, but \vhen I was there, in the 1970s, computing methods \vere much more rudimentary. There were two keypunch machines on the premises, and one of the younger porters would set off each day, with decks of punch cards on the back of a motor scooter. taking our work to be done on the computer at Uni\,ersity College, Dublin, and bringing back the previous day’s runs. Only
once in two years did 1 hear of the cards fallins off and blowing all over the street. In general, out- equipment \\a5 :t getteratiott behind that in the USA, but adequate to our work. On the other hand, the amenity le\cl in the institute certainly e\ceedcd that in in! American university. I think there were [MO rcax~ns for thi<. One was that the Irish, t-elati1.e to the American5, seem Ices concerned with speed and output. and more concerned with human values and the consequences of work on the worker. The other was that the social distance between II< as research scholars and the r’ebt of society was greater in Ireland than here. Pcopic looked up to II\ more, and MC correspondingly thought, 1 suppow, more highly of ourselvc\, which justified a little more “cla
Policy Research in Ireland
SELECTION
OF TOPIC
In Ireland in my research areas, there tend to be less existing literature and fewer scholars working actively. This is not true in every area of research, even in the social sciences; but it is true in the areas in which I happen to work. When I set out to begin my health economics study, for example, there was virtually no literature and no quantitative literature at all. This has complex consequences for the researcher. On the one hand, there is more latitude for topic selection. In the USA one’s topic is likely to be narrower, a marginal addition to a larger body of knowledge. In Ireland, one almost of necessity does broader, less specialized work. On the other hand in Ireland, perhaps precisely because there is so little me-existing scientific research literature, there are often preconceptions about research outcomes, which can tend to foreclose topic areas. I found on more than one occasion that senior scholars tended to believe they already knew what was going on in social and economic questions. An exam pie concerns population movements. While Ireland has had a chronic problem of emigration because of an inability to provide enough employment opportunities, in the early and mid-1970s this turned around and there was for a while net immigration. I seem to have been the one who discovered that this was occurring, though it was by accident. I found that there were more children in each grade in elementary school, by actual count as reported by the schools, than the Central Statistics Office (CSO) had estimated were in the population. I reasoned that there was under way a substantial return migration of former emigrees with their families. While this was subsequently accepted to be the case, when I first went to the director of my research institute to tell of the suspected return migration, I was told that it simply could not be the case. “If large numbers of people were entering the country,” I was told, “one would know.” I was discouraged from pursuing the subject. There is an epilogue to this story. I wrote the CSO to tell them of my findings. The CSO was very interested, of course, and telephoned me to discuss the issue. They had never thought, it seems, of using school enrollments in making their annual intercensal population estimates. They very much wanted to get school enrollment data from the Statistics Section of the Department of Education. Would I mind going there to collect more data for them? I wondered whether it wouldn’t be easier for the CSO to obtain the data from the Department, as they were both in the civil service. No, I was told, that was precisely why it was more difficult for the CSO to obtain data directly from the Department. It would be much easier, I was told, for the outside scholar to obtain the data. Perhaps the CSO was too
AND RESEARCH
163
DESIGN
embarrassed to approach the Department directly; or perhaps official channels would have been too cumbersome. In the end, I agreed to funnel data from the Department to the CSO, who revised their official intercensal population estimates. As noted earlier, in Ireland one is likely to know personally or to meet very quickly everyone working in one’s area. Perhaps for this reason, or perhaps because of the generally less competitive nature of Irish as compared with US society, scholars in the same field seem less likely to criticize one another in print, though there are notable exceptions. Because one can meet and discuss research progress with most others in one’s area, news of research projects spreads rapidly. As in the USA, topic selection in Ireland is influenced by the likelihood of getting external funding, and by the rewards for getting published, or penalties for not getting published. Because Ireland is a small country it is easier to conceptualize whole macrosystems, such as the education system or the health care system, which are too complex in the USA really to wrap your mind around. This influences topic selection as well as research design. In the USA, the federal government has a major, and probably disproportionate, role in establishing research agendas in economics and the social science. because they are the major (and in some sub-specialties, the sole) source of funding. This makes it less likely that research will challenge established assumptions, especially where these assumptions are embodied in existing programs and policies. It does on the other hand make it more likely that research will address active and real concernsthat it will be “relevant.” By contrast, it would appear that, for whatever- rcason, the mix of skills and disciplines in Ireland, and their application to research subjects, is often inappropriate to the needs of the country, almost to the point of irrationality. For example, there is no want of economists, but too many of them are macro-economists. The country is in serious need of applied microeconomic research, to study enterprises and industries, both in the private and public sectors. But there are very few applied microeconomists. Health and medical care uses about 10% of the Gross National Product; but there are no active, trained health economists at all. In sociology and other social sciences, especially social psychology, the subjects undertaken by scholars often seem to have little relationship to the nation’s research needs. It is not so much that the research done is not useful as that some areas get researched to death, while other, more vital subjects seem to be ignored. During my stay in Ireland, one scholar (an American, it should be noted) used scarce research resources in an cnor-
164
A.
DALE TUSSING
mous study of attitudes toward poverty in the general population. What made this otherwise worthy project seem inappropriate was that no one had ever done a study of poverty itself-who are the poor, what are
their circumstances, and what policies and programs could ease their conditions. There seemed to be repeated examples of such inverted priorities.
FUNDING There are government grants and contracts, and foundation grants in Ireland as in the USA. But there are differences in research funding between the two countries. In Ireland, funding often seems to be on a more personal, less arms’-length basis, which seems inevitable when “everyone knows everyone else.” My experience in funding my health study, while not typical, is nonetheless revealing of the culture of Irish research. When 1 wrote and submitted my proposed research project to the institute administration, I included a major nationwide household sample survey, as a data source, the survey work to be carried out by the institute’s own survey unit, arguably the best in the country. While the institute’s administration accepted the proposal, they told me that 1 would have to raise the money externally to finance the cost of the survey. The institute agreed to do the survey work at cost (!), rather than charging (internally) the amount charged external clients. I was told that this was a substantial contribution, and that the remaining amount, flO,OOO, would have to be found, and quickly, as I was on a two-year appointment. In the end, 1 funded the research by raising the amount in bits and pieces from four different sources. I am profoundly indebted to all four, and in no way do these remarks reflect ingratitude, but there is a small story to be told. The Central Bank of Ireland was the first to provide money, and at a crucial time, because
DATA
SOURCES
AND
Data gathering is very different in Ireland from in the us. In the United States, there are abundant published data in the social sciences, and especially economics; moreover, many of these data are available on public use tapes. In some fields, certain statistical series arc “deniable” for reasons of confidentiality, but this simply means that one must go through a screening procedure and demonstrate that one is engaged in bona fide research, that the data are needed for the project, and that one can be trusted with confidential data. If one must do one’s own survey, there are large survey research organizations available to do the work. While there are exceptions, data acquisition is not a major problem in research in the United States. On the other hand, in the USA there can be a cost
it was time for a pilot survey to be run, and, had no money come in at that time, the survey would have to have been abandoned. The Central Bank was the only sponsor who expected nothing in return. Another grantor wanted me to serve on a planning committee, an obligation which consumed a lot of valuable time. Still another wanted me to give a paper at their annual conference, held that year in Killarney, a half day’s train ride from Dublin. And a third, the health insurance monopoly, let it be known that they would be interested in the survey only if it included a major section on dental care (they were considering adopting dental insurance at the time). I included a section on dental care not really required by my own research.’ It is worth adding that, once my major research project was completed, the Department of Health was extremely reluctant to talk to me about sponsoring further research. This was in spite of the fact that the Department does spend a lot on extramural research, that I was the most experienced and knowledgeable scholar in Ireland in the area, and that I had created and had at my disposal a unique data set dealing with medical care utilization, for the most part the only data of its kind ever collected in Ireland. Perhaps I and mq work were too controversial. Perhaps instead I was intimidating. In any event, in Ireland, where research funding is more personal than in the USA, this does not always work to the benefit of the applicant.
DATA
GATHERING
associated with the use of others’ data, and an even greater cost if one has to employ a survey organization. In Ireland, data are scarce. In general, apart from the census, most economic and social science data are collected as a by-product of administering public programs. That is, there is little concept of data being collected for general research purposes. What data exist are often not published. When data are published, the documentation is often scanty. One reads tables and tables of text without footnotes or definitions; an understanding of data often requires telephone calls to civil servants. When data are not published, they are hard to obtain. One often winds up having to collect
Policy Research in Ireland one’s own data, at considerable expense, bother, and delay; this makes replicability a real problem in Ireland, because each scholar has his or her own data set, and it is usually not easy to obtain others’ data for ones’ own use. My major study of the Irish health care system too was based largely on an original household survey. Since I have never had to conduct a survey in the USA, I cannot compare survey work in the two countries. There were no important difficulties; the survey workers were excellent, and the Irish households were quite willing to respond. Indeed, some seemed more than eager to discuss their medical care utilization! One possible difference between survey work in the USA and Ireland involves collection of income data. I wanted to collect medical care utilization data on each and every member of every household contacted, and decided that the person most likely to be well informed about everyone in the house was the housewife. In Ireland, only a small number of married women work outside the home. I have never had any reason to regret the decision to contact housewives. However, my efforts to collect income, as opposed to health, data came up against a problem relating to cultural differences. In Ireland, or so I was told, many housewives are never told how much money their husbands earn, and are simply given a household allowance, and expected to buy groceries and run the home on that. When I tried, in a pilot version of my survey, to collect income data from the housewife respondents, the results did not correspond at all to known patterns of income distribution, and in the final version of the survey I had to abandon the effort to collect income data. In the USA, there is a presumption that public data belong to the public. Indeed, because of the Freedom of Information Act, that is literally so, except where confidentiality or national security reasonably limit access. But my experience was that in Ireland this is not RESEARCH
METHODS:
the case. Civil servants often seem to treat data as their own property, to give to scholars or not, at their sole discretion. Getting data from civil servants seemed to involve a standard ritual: an initial visit, arranged in advance, with polite conversation, and tea and biscuits; and a second visit, at which one could get down to the business of asking for and getting data. Often the first visit was to an official more senior than the second. There are many data that the civil servants simply cannot give out. Most economic and social data cannot be published or distributed until and unless they have first been presented to the Dail (lower house of Parliament). The need to extract data held captive under this rule sometimes necessitates a rather unique research strategy which has no counterpart in the US. All parliamentary systems based on the British system have an institution called “Question Time” in which members of parliament can put questions, oral or written, to the prime minister and to other cabinet ministers. To extract unpublished government data, one must find a member of parliament willing to help. He or she must pose a question, usually written, to the appropriate cabinet minister. Once the answer is given in parliament, the information is public. However, one cannot always be certain that the minister will provide an answer. If the request is too sweeping or voluminous, the minister is likely to reply that the answer cannot be provided, even where it can be. Hence when I wanted to find unpublished information about the central government’s grants in aid to regional health boards, a friendly member of parliament and I had to approach the question bit by bit, first asking questions which established that the data could indeed be provided, and then finally asking the big question that provided the needed information. “PQs,” as they are called, might be called the Irish version of the Freedom of Information Act.
STATISTICAL
While the level of quantitative analysis in economics and social science is lower in Ireland than in the USA, there is no basic difference between the two countries. Indeed, it is in the actual analysis and interpretation of data that the differences between the two are smallest.
DISSEMINATION Research results are published in books, monographs, scholarly journals, and other publications, and are presented in conferences, etc., in Ireland as in the USA. There is no important difference in this area. An exception is that research results in the social science
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ANALYSIS,
ETC.
Irish scholars are more familiar with British than American literature, but many are familiar with both, which puts them a step ahead of the majority of American scholars. In short, the differences in this area are small, and essentially have nothing to do with culture.
OF FINDINGS areas, if they pertain specifically to Ireland (as opposed to research results of universal application, published in Ireland), get attention, often considerable attention, in the media. As in Britain and a number of other countries in Europe, Ireland has several national
A. DALE
166
newspapers, and these tend to cover research findings promptly and thoroughly, especially in such areas as education and health, which relate to massive government programs. The same is true of the national radio and television network. This is a mixed blessing. While it increases the impact of one’s work, at the same time it exposes it to interpre-
TLJSSIN<.;
tation by non-specialists. In general, my experience (with one huge exception, discussed in the next section) was that the press carefully and accurately covers rcsearch, and that media coverage is on balance a considerablc plus. Moreover, it reflects well on Ireland that its popular media are significantly more concerned about scholarship than its counterparts in the United States.
IMPACT The impact of policy-oriented social science research on public debate and on policy seems greater in Ireland than in the USA. My research certainly has attracted considerable public attention. There are a number of reasons for this. First, as noted eat-lier, research topics are more likely to be broad, macro, systemic, and less likely to be narrow, incremental improvements to existing specialized literature. The former are, it would seem, more likely to attract public attention than the latter. Second, there is less published and ongoing research in Ireland, so each increment is likely to have greater impact. One cannot imagine the press SUCCCSYfully covering research in the USA as in Ireland, as it would take far too much time and space to even begin to cover the enormous volume of American policy rcsearch. A third reason why my research in particular attracted attention seems to have been that a visiting American scholar had some sort of built-in esteem. This seems the best place to discuss the press accounts of my education and health monographs. In my education paper, among other things I predicted a crisis in the financing of education, arising out of demographic and other trends. When I turned in the draft, my paper lacked policy suggestions, and I was told to add some. I wrote that if the education sector lacked enough resources to do everything society wanted it to do, it should concentrate on those functions and purposes which contributed most to society generally, as opposed to the individual. 1 argued that Ireland should rely more on individual resources (through tuition payments, etc.) to finance those aspects of education which were primarily of individual benefit. For reasons set out in the book, I interpreted this to mean a shift of resources away from higher education, and even senior high school, and toward junior high school (or its Irish equivalent) and elementary school. For example, college students were to pay higher tuition, but be served by an expanded student loan
fund.
expected these suggestions to be controversial, but I did not expect they would put my report, when it was publi\hed, on the front pages of the national newspapers, or on national radio and TV news! Publication of the report began a national controversy which continued for weeks. ‘The letters to the editor section of the Irish Ti7r7rs included (under the heading I
“The Tussing Report ,” which came to be the popular name for the book) a daily selection of letters, pro and con. The other newspapers also published series of letters. There were editorial cartoons in the newspapers, radio panel discussion shows, columns by political as well as education writers, and even an entire evening’s “Late Late Show” (an Irish talk show somewhere betbveen The Tonight Show and Donahue) devoted to the report. Major politicians and trade union leaders felt required to comment on the report (they obviously relied on the press accounts, not the report itself). Students at Trinity College, Dublin, demonstrated against the report, and the successful candidate for the Trinity College equivalent of student body president ran against Dale Tussing and his report, rather than against his opponent. Nothing in my experience as a social scientist in the United States prepared me for the furor over my report. In general, the Minister for Education and the senior civil servants in the Department of Education denied the accuracy of the report, and specifically disagreed with the prediction of a crisis. Events proved them wrong, and for much of the early 1980s there were “Tussing was right” articles in the papers. The media barrage when the paper was published made me a public figure in Ireland, with the consequence that my other articles and public statements were almost sure to appear in the press thereafter. I was in the USA when my education paper appeared. I returned to Ireland the following year to begin work on the health study. Because the “Tussing Report” on education had been so controversial, 1 was frequently interviewed by reporters, appeared on broadcast media, or invited to address groups on education-related issues. No one seemed to know, or at least to care, that I was \\orking on health. No one, that is, until one day 1 was invited to give a paper to the Annual Conference of the Irish Private Hospitals and Nursing Homes Association, in a symposium entitled, “What Kind of Health Care System Do We Really Want?” 4s 1 was only just beginning my work on the health system, I had no results to offer, and instead looked at the Irish health care system through the eyes ot’ an economist. My remarks were neither \‘cry original (they could have been delivered b>
Policy Research in Ireland almost any economist) nor very interesting (several in the audience, mostly nuns who are hospital administrators, fell asleep during my remarks). Nonetheless (unbeknownst to me as I was trying to get a tuxedo for that evening’s banquet), my conference paper was prominently covered on the evening news on television. The featured speaker at the banquet later that evening proved to be the Minister for Health, who began his address by scolding me for my (reported) remarks on the health care system. It was with genuinely mixed feelings that I listened as the head of the nation’s health care system, standing no more than 15 feet from me, greeted my very first public utterances on health with a scathing lecture. On the one hand, such high level attention certainly makes one feel important; but on the other, it’s not the ideal way to kick off a research project! The next day, I tried to repair the damage. The Minister had said that he “looked forward to reading the papers” at the conference. I knew that the criticism 1 nad been quoted as making did not appear in my paper, and I knew that I had included a favorable reference to the Minister. As long as the Minister’s remarks had not been heard by reporters and quoted in the media, which would have had the effect of locking the Minister into his criticisms, the day could be saved merely by sending a copy of the paper, together with an appropriate cover letter. The first newspaper I looked at, the Irish Times, the paper preferred by most professional people, college graduates, and intellectuals, included a straightforward and completely correct account of my paper, and did not mention the Minister. The second newspaper, the Irish Press, covered the conference but reported only the papers of others, just noting that I “also spoke.” Again, the Minister was not mentioned. The third newspaper, the Irish Independent, Ireland’s largest circulation newspaper, did not mention the conference at all. I thought I had survived the incident unscathed. Ten days later, when people were just arriving for work in the morning, the institute where I worked was besieged by telephone calls asking for copies of my “new report on health.” Told that my health report was years away from being finished, the callers cited a news
167
story in the Irish Independent reporting that one had just been released. Anxiously, I sought out a copy of that morning’s Zndo, as it is called, and looked for a story on a health report attributed to me. I did not have to look far. It was the lead story in the newspaper, with a screaming banner headline across page one, reading: &540M.
HEALTH
SERVICE
MUDDLE!
Over this, in smaller letters, but also across the top of page one, was “ACCUSED: The money-no-object hospital system.” The headlines and the accompanying news story reflected as much the reporter’s imagination as my paper. The story itself told readers in the first paragraph that I held that the health care system was in “urgent need of a radical overhaul” and in the second paragraph that I had called for “curbs” on doctors. (I had done neither.) The Evening Herald (the Zndo’s trashy afternoon edition) reported, “An expert urged tough new controls over doctors.” These reported policy recommendations, which could obviously cripple a research project only just beginning, were complete inventions. There were no policy recommendations in the conference paper at all! There are sensational newspapers playing fast and loose with the truth in many countries, and Ireland is not unique in this respect. What is unique is that a minor conference paper, or even an ostensible research report, should receive such attention. What happened next could also have happened anywhere, but it bears repeating. The national radio network telephoned and said they wanted to interview me on my “new report.” When I explained that there was no new report, only the conference paper they had already reported on (a broadcast evidently heard by the Minister for Health, it will be recalled), and that the Independent was just trying to make news out of an old item, I was told that none of that mattered, that it was news all over again. No one in authority ever mentioned these newspaper articles to me. I do not know whether or how they influenced the progress of my work. And I do not know whether all of the publicity my work has received in Ireland is on balance good or bad; I do know that nothing like it has ever happened to my work in the USA.
CONCLUSION There are differences between the conduct of research in the USA and Ireland. They are due partly to differences in the levels of development of the two countries, and of their social science scholarship; partly to the sizes of the countries; and partly to cultural differences. An American accustomed to getting things done in a hurry would soon get frustrated with the pace in Ireland; but one eventually gets accustomed to it and even
likes it. An English businessman, working in Ireland, once remarked to me that if you stay in Ireland too long, you can never go back, because it’s easier to slow your pace when you come in than it is to speed up again when you go back. But then, if you stayed that long, you probably would not want to go back.
Copyright
in the USA. All rights reserved.
0149-7189/L@ $3.00 t .oo “1 1988 Pergamon Press plc
SOCIAL SCIENCE IN THE LAND OF SAINTS AND SCHOLARS: POLICY RESEARCH IN IRELAND
A. DALE TUSSING Economics
Department,
Syracuse
University
ABSTRACT Drawing on the author’s experiences as an American social scientist working in Ireland on policy-oriented research relating to education and health, the paper discusses differences between such research in Ireland and the USA. In general, differences are due to the small size of the country; its lower level of economic development; the lack of a developed literature in the fields in which the author worked; the lack of published data; and cultural differences affecting scholarship, such as the lower level of competitiveness in human relations. In addition, policy-oriented social science research gets considerable media attention in Ireland. The very considerable attention given the author’s work astonished him. The author illustrates the points made with accounts of his own experiences.
reflects differences in the organization of research, and would apply to, say, physics or mathematics as much as to economics or social policy. Under this heading would come such things as the organization of research bodies, funding, and dissemination of results. Another kind reflects cultural differences between the countries, and includes social, political, religious, economic, linguistic, etc., differences. Cultural differences influence not only substance and method but also organization itself. That is, the two kinds of differences interact to produce complex consequences for the researcher. There is a wholly different sense in which research organization and culture interact. The “foreign” researcher, attempting to initiate research in another society than his or her own, must quickly learn the “culture of research” in the new country. He or she must learn to unravel the complexities of formal and informal organization, public and private, and at all levels of government. This is especially urgent if research is to be externally funded. I carried out two major research projects in Ireland, on educational finance and health
This paper discusses some of the differences I have found between social science research as conducted in the United States and in Ireland. I am an American, and have conducted such research in both countries. I hold a tenured university professorship in the USA, and have done most of my research, both unfunded and externally financed, in this country. I lived in Ireland for more than four years (in several periods over a span of 12 years), and conducted large research projects as an employee of an interdisciplinary, not-forprofit research organization. I have concentrated on policy-oriented rather than basic or methodological research. In addition to living in Ireland, I have had a continuing research relationship with that country, and have visited it more than a dozen times. The present paper reflects both my experiences and my observations. In particular, I emphasize the perceptions of a national of one country trying to do policy research in another. 1 found in general two kinds of differences between social science research in the two countries. One kind
The author wishes to acknowledge the helpful comments of Miriam Wiley of the Economic and Social Research Institute, Dublin, who read an earlier draft of the paper, and Martha Wojtowycz of Syracuse University, who also read a draft of the paper and who helped in all stages of the preparation of the manuscript. The author alone is responsible for all errors of fact, judgement, or taste. The author also wishes to thank Pauline Ginsberg of Utica College, Syracuse University, for suggesting the topic and for her frequent expressions of faith that the paper would ultimately be completed. Requests for reprints should be sent to A. Dale Tussing, Economics Department, Syracuse University, 712 Ostrom Avenue, Syracuse, NY 13244. 161
A. DAI.E- TUSSINC;
162
economics, a a staff member of a research organktion, which provided the basic funding; hence I did not ha\c IO seek outside support. However, 1 did ha\e to get out
01’ the diffcrcnces
in the USA and !reland:
between that
social of sheer
science size.
t-cseat-ch
Ireland
the jociat science,. sire also int’lucttce\ the object ot research: the underlying society to bc ~tudiccl i\ more complc\, often \,irtually intractably M), in the l:nittxi States than in Ireland. The US health care \ysierii, f’or trample. is w intricate that it atmo\t dcf‘ie< description. c\cept in the mosl general tei-nis; while Ihc Irish itculth care sy5teni i5 not onI> simple enough !o he cic\zi-ibcd but can actually bc coiiceI~tLtali/~~tl ni~nraltq. I hc \;;IIIIC i\ true tll‘ (?I her macros! \tt’nis in t tie (:co wcictic4.
ix ;I
small, tniddle-income country with a popalation of appr-oximately 3.5 million. The I.‘SA i\ a rich and po\ver ful country with a population of 240 million.
difference influencc~ the organization of research. To take one not so minor example, in Ireland one is likely to kno\$, Lirtually e\eryonc working in ottc’s ai.e;t, \vher-ras in the lJSA this i\ often out of the question. In Thi\
ORGANIZATIOK
OF RKSE:ARCH BODIES
There are important differences in the organi/.ation of universitic\ (and other educational institutions) in Ireland and the USA. but these do not appear significantI) to influence the conduct of policy oriented social scicncc research. The same is true of non-academic research institutioiis. Ihe research institute in which 1 worked ~vas not related to any academic instttution, but (unlike an! other such institute in Ireland) it used the title ot “Professor” as its highest rank. Research staff are all members of a trade union (as indeed are all facult), members in higher education institutions). The research institute is too small to engage in collective bargaining on its own; instead, pay is tied to pay in the uni\,ersities, but with a twist. Because institute employees (or so it \\a$ argued) are full-time and have no opportunity to do outside consulting for extra money, they are paid an additional 15ob, above what comparable university faculty members are paid. In exchange, they have to promise to limit their outside consulting work to a minimum. This is a very congenial arrangement for man) institute workers, who Lvould not care to do any extra work whatever the circumstances; but it annoys a handful of ambitious, hard-working staff who disdainfullq refer to it as “our bonus for low productivity.” The research institute has recently acquired a sophisticated state-of-the-art computer system, but \vhen I was there, in the 1970s, computing methods \vere much more rudimentary. There were two keypunch machines on the premises, and one of the younger porters would set off each day, with decks of punch cards on the back of a motor scooter. taking our work to be done on the computer at Uni\,ersity College, Dublin, and bringing back the previous day’s runs. Only
once in two years did 1 hear of the cards fallins off and blowing all over the street. In general, out- equipment \\a5 :t getteratiott behind that in the USA, but adequate to our work. On the other hand, the amenity le\cl in the institute certainly e\ceedcd that in in! American university. I think there were [MO rcax~ns for thi<. One was that the Irish, t-elati1.e to the American5, seem Ices concerned with speed and output. and more concerned with human values and the consequences of work on the worker. The other was that the social distance between II< as research scholars and the r’ebt of society was greater in Ireland than here. Pcopic looked up to II\ more, and MC correspondingly thought, 1 suppow, more highly of ourselvc\, which justified a little more “cla
Policy Research in Ireland
SELECTION
OF TOPIC
In Ireland in my research areas, there tend to be less existing literature and fewer scholars working actively. This is not true in every area of research, even in the social sciences; but it is true in the areas in which I happen to work. When I set out to begin my health economics study, for example, there was virtually no literature and no quantitative literature at all. This has complex consequences for the researcher. On the one hand, there is more latitude for topic selection. In the USA one’s topic is likely to be narrower, a marginal addition to a larger body of knowledge. In Ireland, one almost of necessity does broader, less specialized work. On the other hand in Ireland, perhaps precisely because there is so little me-existing scientific research literature, there are often preconceptions about research outcomes, which can tend to foreclose topic areas. I found on more than one occasion that senior scholars tended to believe they already knew what was going on in social and economic questions. An exam pie concerns population movements. While Ireland has had a chronic problem of emigration because of an inability to provide enough employment opportunities, in the early and mid-1970s this turned around and there was for a while net immigration. I seem to have been the one who discovered that this was occurring, though it was by accident. I found that there were more children in each grade in elementary school, by actual count as reported by the schools, than the Central Statistics Office (CSO) had estimated were in the population. I reasoned that there was under way a substantial return migration of former emigrees with their families. While this was subsequently accepted to be the case, when I first went to the director of my research institute to tell of the suspected return migration, I was told that it simply could not be the case. “If large numbers of people were entering the country,” I was told, “one would know.” I was discouraged from pursuing the subject. There is an epilogue to this story. I wrote the CSO to tell them of my findings. The CSO was very interested, of course, and telephoned me to discuss the issue. They had never thought, it seems, of using school enrollments in making their annual intercensal population estimates. They very much wanted to get school enrollment data from the Statistics Section of the Department of Education. Would I mind going there to collect more data for them? I wondered whether it wouldn’t be easier for the CSO to obtain the data from the Department, as they were both in the civil service. No, I was told, that was precisely why it was more difficult for the CSO to obtain data directly from the Department. It would be much easier, I was told, for the outside scholar to obtain the data. Perhaps the CSO was too
AND RESEARCH
163
DESIGN
embarrassed to approach the Department directly; or perhaps official channels would have been too cumbersome. In the end, I agreed to funnel data from the Department to the CSO, who revised their official intercensal population estimates. As noted earlier, in Ireland one is likely to know personally or to meet very quickly everyone working in one’s area. Perhaps for this reason, or perhaps because of the generally less competitive nature of Irish as compared with US society, scholars in the same field seem less likely to criticize one another in print, though there are notable exceptions. Because one can meet and discuss research progress with most others in one’s area, news of research projects spreads rapidly. As in the USA, topic selection in Ireland is influenced by the likelihood of getting external funding, and by the rewards for getting published, or penalties for not getting published. Because Ireland is a small country it is easier to conceptualize whole macrosystems, such as the education system or the health care system, which are too complex in the USA really to wrap your mind around. This influences topic selection as well as research design. In the USA, the federal government has a major, and probably disproportionate, role in establishing research agendas in economics and the social science. because they are the major (and in some sub-specialties, the sole) source of funding. This makes it less likely that research will challenge established assumptions, especially where these assumptions are embodied in existing programs and policies. It does on the other hand make it more likely that research will address active and real concernsthat it will be “relevant.” By contrast, it would appear that, for whatever- rcason, the mix of skills and disciplines in Ireland, and their application to research subjects, is often inappropriate to the needs of the country, almost to the point of irrationality. For example, there is no want of economists, but too many of them are macro-economists. The country is in serious need of applied microeconomic research, to study enterprises and industries, both in the private and public sectors. But there are very few applied microeconomists. Health and medical care uses about 10% of the Gross National Product; but there are no active, trained health economists at all. In sociology and other social sciences, especially social psychology, the subjects undertaken by scholars often seem to have little relationship to the nation’s research needs. It is not so much that the research done is not useful as that some areas get researched to death, while other, more vital subjects seem to be ignored. During my stay in Ireland, one scholar (an American, it should be noted) used scarce research resources in an cnor-
164
A.
DALE TUSSING
mous study of attitudes toward poverty in the general population. What made this otherwise worthy project seem inappropriate was that no one had ever done a study of poverty itself-who are the poor, what are
their circumstances, and what policies and programs could ease their conditions. There seemed to be repeated examples of such inverted priorities.
FUNDING There are government grants and contracts, and foundation grants in Ireland as in the USA. But there are differences in research funding between the two countries. In Ireland, funding often seems to be on a more personal, less arms’-length basis, which seems inevitable when “everyone knows everyone else.” My experience in funding my health study, while not typical, is nonetheless revealing of the culture of Irish research. When 1 wrote and submitted my proposed research project to the institute administration, I included a major nationwide household sample survey, as a data source, the survey work to be carried out by the institute’s own survey unit, arguably the best in the country. While the institute’s administration accepted the proposal, they told me that 1 would have to raise the money externally to finance the cost of the survey. The institute agreed to do the survey work at cost (!), rather than charging (internally) the amount charged external clients. I was told that this was a substantial contribution, and that the remaining amount, flO,OOO, would have to be found, and quickly, as I was on a two-year appointment. In the end, 1 funded the research by raising the amount in bits and pieces from four different sources. I am profoundly indebted to all four, and in no way do these remarks reflect ingratitude, but there is a small story to be told. The Central Bank of Ireland was the first to provide money, and at a crucial time, because
DATA
SOURCES
AND
Data gathering is very different in Ireland from in the us. In the United States, there are abundant published data in the social sciences, and especially economics; moreover, many of these data are available on public use tapes. In some fields, certain statistical series arc “deniable” for reasons of confidentiality, but this simply means that one must go through a screening procedure and demonstrate that one is engaged in bona fide research, that the data are needed for the project, and that one can be trusted with confidential data. If one must do one’s own survey, there are large survey research organizations available to do the work. While there are exceptions, data acquisition is not a major problem in research in the United States. On the other hand, in the USA there can be a cost
it was time for a pilot survey to be run, and, had no money come in at that time, the survey would have to have been abandoned. The Central Bank was the only sponsor who expected nothing in return. Another grantor wanted me to serve on a planning committee, an obligation which consumed a lot of valuable time. Still another wanted me to give a paper at their annual conference, held that year in Killarney, a half day’s train ride from Dublin. And a third, the health insurance monopoly, let it be known that they would be interested in the survey only if it included a major section on dental care (they were considering adopting dental insurance at the time). I included a section on dental care not really required by my own research.’ It is worth adding that, once my major research project was completed, the Department of Health was extremely reluctant to talk to me about sponsoring further research. This was in spite of the fact that the Department does spend a lot on extramural research, that I was the most experienced and knowledgeable scholar in Ireland in the area, and that I had created and had at my disposal a unique data set dealing with medical care utilization, for the most part the only data of its kind ever collected in Ireland. Perhaps I and mq work were too controversial. Perhaps instead I was intimidating. In any event, in Ireland, where research funding is more personal than in the USA, this does not always work to the benefit of the applicant.
DATA
GATHERING
associated with the use of others’ data, and an even greater cost if one has to employ a survey organization. In Ireland, data are scarce. In general, apart from the census, most economic and social science data are collected as a by-product of administering public programs. That is, there is little concept of data being collected for general research purposes. What data exist are often not published. When data are published, the documentation is often scanty. One reads tables and tables of text without footnotes or definitions; an understanding of data often requires telephone calls to civil servants. When data are not published, they are hard to obtain. One often winds up having to collect
Policy Research in Ireland one’s own data, at considerable expense, bother, and delay; this makes replicability a real problem in Ireland, because each scholar has his or her own data set, and it is usually not easy to obtain others’ data for ones’ own use. My major study of the Irish health care system too was based largely on an original household survey. Since I have never had to conduct a survey in the USA, I cannot compare survey work in the two countries. There were no important difficulties; the survey workers were excellent, and the Irish households were quite willing to respond. Indeed, some seemed more than eager to discuss their medical care utilization! One possible difference between survey work in the USA and Ireland involves collection of income data. I wanted to collect medical care utilization data on each and every member of every household contacted, and decided that the person most likely to be well informed about everyone in the house was the housewife. In Ireland, only a small number of married women work outside the home. I have never had any reason to regret the decision to contact housewives. However, my efforts to collect income, as opposed to health, data came up against a problem relating to cultural differences. In Ireland, or so I was told, many housewives are never told how much money their husbands earn, and are simply given a household allowance, and expected to buy groceries and run the home on that. When I tried, in a pilot version of my survey, to collect income data from the housewife respondents, the results did not correspond at all to known patterns of income distribution, and in the final version of the survey I had to abandon the effort to collect income data. In the USA, there is a presumption that public data belong to the public. Indeed, because of the Freedom of Information Act, that is literally so, except where confidentiality or national security reasonably limit access. But my experience was that in Ireland this is not RESEARCH
METHODS:
the case. Civil servants often seem to treat data as their own property, to give to scholars or not, at their sole discretion. Getting data from civil servants seemed to involve a standard ritual: an initial visit, arranged in advance, with polite conversation, and tea and biscuits; and a second visit, at which one could get down to the business of asking for and getting data. Often the first visit was to an official more senior than the second. There are many data that the civil servants simply cannot give out. Most economic and social data cannot be published or distributed until and unless they have first been presented to the Dail (lower house of Parliament). The need to extract data held captive under this rule sometimes necessitates a rather unique research strategy which has no counterpart in the US. All parliamentary systems based on the British system have an institution called “Question Time” in which members of parliament can put questions, oral or written, to the prime minister and to other cabinet ministers. To extract unpublished government data, one must find a member of parliament willing to help. He or she must pose a question, usually written, to the appropriate cabinet minister. Once the answer is given in parliament, the information is public. However, one cannot always be certain that the minister will provide an answer. If the request is too sweeping or voluminous, the minister is likely to reply that the answer cannot be provided, even where it can be. Hence when I wanted to find unpublished information about the central government’s grants in aid to regional health boards, a friendly member of parliament and I had to approach the question bit by bit, first asking questions which established that the data could indeed be provided, and then finally asking the big question that provided the needed information. “PQs,” as they are called, might be called the Irish version of the Freedom of Information Act.
STATISTICAL
While the level of quantitative analysis in economics and social science is lower in Ireland than in the USA, there is no basic difference between the two countries. Indeed, it is in the actual analysis and interpretation of data that the differences between the two are smallest.
DISSEMINATION Research results are published in books, monographs, scholarly journals, and other publications, and are presented in conferences, etc., in Ireland as in the USA. There is no important difference in this area. An exception is that research results in the social science
165
ANALYSIS,
ETC.
Irish scholars are more familiar with British than American literature, but many are familiar with both, which puts them a step ahead of the majority of American scholars. In short, the differences in this area are small, and essentially have nothing to do with culture.
OF FINDINGS areas, if they pertain specifically to Ireland (as opposed to research results of universal application, published in Ireland), get attention, often considerable attention, in the media. As in Britain and a number of other countries in Europe, Ireland has several national
A. DALE
166
newspapers, and these tend to cover research findings promptly and thoroughly, especially in such areas as education and health, which relate to massive government programs. The same is true of the national radio and television network. This is a mixed blessing. While it increases the impact of one’s work, at the same time it exposes it to interpre-
TLJSSIN<.;
tation by non-specialists. In general, my experience (with one huge exception, discussed in the next section) was that the press carefully and accurately covers rcsearch, and that media coverage is on balance a considerablc plus. Moreover, it reflects well on Ireland that its popular media are significantly more concerned about scholarship than its counterparts in the United States.
IMPACT The impact of policy-oriented social science research on public debate and on policy seems greater in Ireland than in the USA. My research certainly has attracted considerable public attention. There are a number of reasons for this. First, as noted eat-lier, research topics are more likely to be broad, macro, systemic, and less likely to be narrow, incremental improvements to existing specialized literature. The former are, it would seem, more likely to attract public attention than the latter. Second, there is less published and ongoing research in Ireland, so each increment is likely to have greater impact. One cannot imagine the press SUCCCSYfully covering research in the USA as in Ireland, as it would take far too much time and space to even begin to cover the enormous volume of American policy rcsearch. A third reason why my research in particular attracted attention seems to have been that a visiting American scholar had some sort of built-in esteem. This seems the best place to discuss the press accounts of my education and health monographs. In my education paper, among other things I predicted a crisis in the financing of education, arising out of demographic and other trends. When I turned in the draft, my paper lacked policy suggestions, and I was told to add some. I wrote that if the education sector lacked enough resources to do everything society wanted it to do, it should concentrate on those functions and purposes which contributed most to society generally, as opposed to the individual. 1 argued that Ireland should rely more on individual resources (through tuition payments, etc.) to finance those aspects of education which were primarily of individual benefit. For reasons set out in the book, I interpreted this to mean a shift of resources away from higher education, and even senior high school, and toward junior high school (or its Irish equivalent) and elementary school. For example, college students were to pay higher tuition, but be served by an expanded student loan
fund.
expected these suggestions to be controversial, but I did not expect they would put my report, when it was publi\hed, on the front pages of the national newspapers, or on national radio and TV news! Publication of the report began a national controversy which continued for weeks. ‘The letters to the editor section of the Irish Ti7r7rs included (under the heading I
“The Tussing Report ,” which came to be the popular name for the book) a daily selection of letters, pro and con. The other newspapers also published series of letters. There were editorial cartoons in the newspapers, radio panel discussion shows, columns by political as well as education writers, and even an entire evening’s “Late Late Show” (an Irish talk show somewhere betbveen The Tonight Show and Donahue) devoted to the report. Major politicians and trade union leaders felt required to comment on the report (they obviously relied on the press accounts, not the report itself). Students at Trinity College, Dublin, demonstrated against the report, and the successful candidate for the Trinity College equivalent of student body president ran against Dale Tussing and his report, rather than against his opponent. Nothing in my experience as a social scientist in the United States prepared me for the furor over my report. In general, the Minister for Education and the senior civil servants in the Department of Education denied the accuracy of the report, and specifically disagreed with the prediction of a crisis. Events proved them wrong, and for much of the early 1980s there were “Tussing was right” articles in the papers. The media barrage when the paper was published made me a public figure in Ireland, with the consequence that my other articles and public statements were almost sure to appear in the press thereafter. I was in the USA when my education paper appeared. I returned to Ireland the following year to begin work on the health study. Because the “Tussing Report” on education had been so controversial, 1 was frequently interviewed by reporters, appeared on broadcast media, or invited to address groups on education-related issues. No one seemed to know, or at least to care, that I was \\orking on health. No one, that is, until one day 1 was invited to give a paper to the Annual Conference of the Irish Private Hospitals and Nursing Homes Association, in a symposium entitled, “What Kind of Health Care System Do We Really Want?” 4s 1 was only just beginning my work on the health system, I had no results to offer, and instead looked at the Irish health care system through the eyes ot’ an economist. My remarks were neither \‘cry original (they could have been delivered b>
Policy Research in Ireland almost any economist) nor very interesting (several in the audience, mostly nuns who are hospital administrators, fell asleep during my remarks). Nonetheless (unbeknownst to me as I was trying to get a tuxedo for that evening’s banquet), my conference paper was prominently covered on the evening news on television. The featured speaker at the banquet later that evening proved to be the Minister for Health, who began his address by scolding me for my (reported) remarks on the health care system. It was with genuinely mixed feelings that I listened as the head of the nation’s health care system, standing no more than 15 feet from me, greeted my very first public utterances on health with a scathing lecture. On the one hand, such high level attention certainly makes one feel important; but on the other, it’s not the ideal way to kick off a research project! The next day, I tried to repair the damage. The Minister had said that he “looked forward to reading the papers” at the conference. I knew that the criticism 1 nad been quoted as making did not appear in my paper, and I knew that I had included a favorable reference to the Minister. As long as the Minister’s remarks had not been heard by reporters and quoted in the media, which would have had the effect of locking the Minister into his criticisms, the day could be saved merely by sending a copy of the paper, together with an appropriate cover letter. The first newspaper I looked at, the Irish Times, the paper preferred by most professional people, college graduates, and intellectuals, included a straightforward and completely correct account of my paper, and did not mention the Minister. The second newspaper, the Irish Press, covered the conference but reported only the papers of others, just noting that I “also spoke.” Again, the Minister was not mentioned. The third newspaper, the Irish Independent, Ireland’s largest circulation newspaper, did not mention the conference at all. I thought I had survived the incident unscathed. Ten days later, when people were just arriving for work in the morning, the institute where I worked was besieged by telephone calls asking for copies of my “new report on health.” Told that my health report was years away from being finished, the callers cited a news
167
story in the Irish Independent reporting that one had just been released. Anxiously, I sought out a copy of that morning’s Zndo, as it is called, and looked for a story on a health report attributed to me. I did not have to look far. It was the lead story in the newspaper, with a screaming banner headline across page one, reading: &540M.
HEALTH
SERVICE
MUDDLE!
Over this, in smaller letters, but also across the top of page one, was “ACCUSED: The money-no-object hospital system.” The headlines and the accompanying news story reflected as much the reporter’s imagination as my paper. The story itself told readers in the first paragraph that I held that the health care system was in “urgent need of a radical overhaul” and in the second paragraph that I had called for “curbs” on doctors. (I had done neither.) The Evening Herald (the Zndo’s trashy afternoon edition) reported, “An expert urged tough new controls over doctors.” These reported policy recommendations, which could obviously cripple a research project only just beginning, were complete inventions. There were no policy recommendations in the conference paper at all! There are sensational newspapers playing fast and loose with the truth in many countries, and Ireland is not unique in this respect. What is unique is that a minor conference paper, or even an ostensible research report, should receive such attention. What happened next could also have happened anywhere, but it bears repeating. The national radio network telephoned and said they wanted to interview me on my “new report.” When I explained that there was no new report, only the conference paper they had already reported on (a broadcast evidently heard by the Minister for Health, it will be recalled), and that the Independent was just trying to make news out of an old item, I was told that none of that mattered, that it was news all over again. No one in authority ever mentioned these newspaper articles to me. I do not know whether or how they influenced the progress of my work. And I do not know whether all of the publicity my work has received in Ireland is on balance good or bad; I do know that nothing like it has ever happened to my work in the USA.
CONCLUSION There are differences between the conduct of research in the USA and Ireland. They are due partly to differences in the levels of development of the two countries, and of their social science scholarship; partly to the sizes of the countries; and partly to cultural differences. An American accustomed to getting things done in a hurry would soon get frustrated with the pace in Ireland; but one eventually gets accustomed to it and even
likes it. An English businessman, working in Ireland, once remarked to me that if you stay in Ireland too long, you can never go back, because it’s easier to slow your pace when you come in than it is to speed up again when you go back. But then, if you stayed that long, you probably would not want to go back.