The Annual Miriam Hederman O’Brien Prize | Foundation for Fiscal Studies

The Foundation for Fiscal Studies presents the annual Miriam Hederman O’Brien Prize to recognise outstanding contributors in the area of Irish fiscal, economic and social policy. The aim is to recognise those whose work contributes to informed discussion of key fiscal, economic and social policy issues.

Each year, nominations are invited for work that has added to the public knowledge or understanding in areas such as taxation, public expenditure and other related fiscal policy topics. The Prize aims to recognise work that focuses on practical problems rather than abstract puzzles, that raise questions about how policy impacts and might improve outcomes, or shed light on issues that really matter to the future of Ireland as a society as well as an economy.

Nominated work may include individuals or institutions with output such as research papers, reports, books, book chapters, blog posts, opinion pieces, newspaper articles, television or radio contributions/documentaries or any other method which is publicly available and which offers new and relevant insights to help inform practical policy responses to the most strategic and significant issues we need to address in Ireland.

2025 Prize Giving

A ceremony to recognise the finalists and to award the overall prize will take place on Wednesday 17th September at 8.30am – 10.30am at the Irish Tax Institute.

There will be a series of short presentations from a selection of nominated papers, including one from the overall winner, ensuring an insightful and informative event. Places are limited, so if you would like to attend, please email info@fiscal.ie to be added to the attendance list.

Criteria / Eligibility

The Prize is for work completed during the period 1 January to 31 December in a given year.
There are no age or nationality criteria.
No individual may be awarded the Prize more than once. Previous winners can still be nominated and may be recognised for an award other than the main prize.
Jointly-produced work will be considered, provided that no contributor has previously been awarded the Prize.
Work produced by an institution rather than a named or specific author may be submitted and institutions are eligible even if they have previously won the Prize
Where funding has been provided by a third party or other organisation to support the work which is being nominated, this should be disclosed.

2024 FINALISTS

We are delighted to share with you the list of finalists for this year’s Miriam Hederman O’Brien prize. Please feel free to click on each title in order to access the material.

Long-term Residential Care in Ireland: Developments Since the Onset of the Covid-19 Pandemic, Brendan Walsh, Sheelah Connolly, ESRI
AI: Friend or Foe? Collection of 3 papers, Paper 1; Summary and Policy Considerations, Paper 2: A Review Of How AI Could Impact Ireland’s Economy, 3) An Analysis Of How AI Could Impact Ireland’s Labour Market, Keith Fitzgerald, Dermot Coates, Harry Williamson, Neil Gannon, Kevin Daly. Dept. of Finance, Dept. of Enterprise, Trade & Employment (IGEES)
R&D Policy Instrument Mix Sequencing: Evaluating The Impact of Receiving R&D Grants and R&D Tax Credits Over Time on Firm-level R&D; Helena Lenihan, Kevin Mulligan, Mauricio Perez-Alaniz, Christian Rammer, University of Limerick
Productivity in Ireland’s Domestically-Owned Market Economy: A Comparative Study, Chris Smart, Michael Taft, NERI, SIPTU
A Cross Country Perspective on Irish Enterprise Investment: Do Fundamentals or Constraints Matter?, Eric Gargan, Eoin Kenny, Cynthia O’Regan, Conor O’Toole, Dept. of Finance, ESRI
Budget 2024: A Distributional Impact Analysis of Government and Opposition Tax and Welfare Packages on Irish Households, PBO Institution, PBO
Hospital Performance: An Examination of Trends in Activity, Expenditure and Workforce in Publicly Funded Acute Hospitals in Ireland, Conan Shine, Mark Hennessy, Dept. of Health, IGEES
The Cultivation of Fiscal Citizenship: Reflections on the Journey of an Irish Tax Clinic, Emer Mulligan & Margaret O’Neill, University of Galway
The Currency – Selected Articles, Article 1: Game Over: How Europe won its €13bn case against Ireland and Apple, Article 2: Too big and not big enough: The failure of European Reits and Article 3: More and more money is being pumped into Irefs. How much tax are they paying? Thomas Hubert, Sean Keyes, Ian Kehoe, The Currency News Site
An Analysis of Housing Affordability and Market Access: A Snapshot from June 2024, Conan Shine, Orlagh Lavelle, D PENDR

2023 WINNER:

The winner of the Miriam Hederman O’Brien Prize 2023 was Eddie Casey and Killian Carroll, Irish Fiscal Advisory Council for their work on “What Climate Change means for Ireland’s Public Finances”. The award was presented by Minister of Finance, Jack Chambers.

2023 FINALISTS

We are delighted to share with you the list of finalists for this year’s Miriam Hederman O’Brien prize. Please feel free to click on each title in order to access the material.