The minds behind the report

THEORY is never as much fun as practice which is why Colm McCarthy has a head start on most academics when he takes the podium in lecture halls.

The University College Dublin economist can not only tell students how to save a country’s decimated finances, courtesy of his role as chairman of An Bord Snip Nua, he can show them.

And not for the first time. McCarthy was part of the original Bord Snip, the 1987 version appointed by then-finance minister Ray MacSharry. At the time McCarthy, himself a graduate of UCD, was running an economic consultancy firm, Davy, Kelleher and McCarthy, having learned his trade at the Central Bank and the Economic and Social Research Institute.