To get the full flavour of the role of the Board of TCD in its long history, it is necessary to go to sources such as RB McDowells 'Trinity College 1592-1952'. In the current context I have scanned the Board minutes, which are accessible to readers in the TCD Library MS room, and identified references either to JJ directly, or to entities with which he was associated.

There is also a record of the meetings of the Junior Fellows, who were represented on the Board by two of their number, usually the most senior. I have scanned these minutes also, and interspersed some episodes from this source into the common chronology. It becomes apparent as the decades roll on that increasing frustration at the junior level leads to an enhanced role for the Junior Fellows meetings, leading eventually to the constitutional reform movement in the 1950s associated with AJ McConnell, subsequently to become Provost.

It will become apparent that JJ was in effect a pioneer or advance-guard of this 'new wave' of academic reform, though he was too early actually to 'ride it', and when it broke, he found himself sidelined.

JJ's first encounter with the TCD Board, apart from his undergraduate period, was in the context of the Fellowship examinations; he was among the last to become a Fellow by this mode. Shortly afterwards they changed the procedure, to submission of published work. There was perceived to be a glut of polymath Fellows, whose promotion prospects looked increasingly unrealistic.

The feeling of the Board at the time is summarised in a letter from the then Provost Anthony Traill (being ill in bed), urging that the Board '...give notice now that no examination for Fellowship will be held next year 1914... it is absolutely necessary to put a stop to the congestion of non-tutor Fellows...'.

There had been concern on this matter among the Junior Fellows, who in March 1913 had held a series of meetings at which concern was expressed at the excessive number of new Fellows coming in via the examination process. They wanted to get Senior Fellows to retire, and to reform the election process toward dependence on published work. There was also concern that the flow inwards via the examination process would be unrelated to the nature of the specialist teaching requirements: broadly speaking, too much classics and not enough science.

There are indications in his first decade as Fellow that JJ was someone who took up good causes, like student representation, a co-operative store for students living in College, and payment for the College servants ('skips')(1).

On October 18 1913 the question arose of having a co-operative food store in the College; JJ had a hand in this(2). JJ had by this time published his Civil War in Ulster; it is perhaps surprising that no echo of this seems to have reached the Board minutes(3).

JJ also is on record as applying for leave of absence to take up the Albert Kahn Travelling Fellowship, which he held in 1914 and 1915)(4). Despite his active development of economics as his preferred discipline, his main academic role was as Assistant to Dr WA Goligher in Ancient History and Classical Archaeology. For a while he lectured the Indian Civil Service candidates. He was appointed a Tutor in 1917.

During his first decade he was a regular attender at the Junior Fellows meetings, and was associated with attempts to reform the tutorial system, and the process of election to Fellowship. There were links with politics outside the College in that the Fellows supported the Board in the latter's attempts to ensure that Government support for TCD was retained under the Home Rule Act.

Shortly before the Rising, on March 7 1916, JJ was mentioned as having put in an application that the Bursar should deal with the DU Co-op for groceries, and this was referred to the Bursar's discretion. The Co-op was clearly high on his current agenda, and there is evidence elsewhere that he regarded it as a pilot project in economic organisation(5).

The 1920s is a period when JJ was as yet not much into College politics, though he does get an occasional mention in the Board minutes, primarily in the context of his attempt to qualify himself for a role in the nascent School of Political Economy and Commerce. This however he did mostly by his extern work: service on Government commissions, the Barrington lectures and so on. He also tried to improve his academic qualifications, in that he attended a course in London School of Economics, for which he sought expenses at the November 21 1921 Board Meeting. This application was deferred until Dec 3, when he was re-appointed as Assistant to Professor Goligher (Ancient History and Classical Archaeology), while also receiving a slice of a supplementary grant, of which £60 went to Professor Bastable towards the new School of Political Economy and Commerce, and also £30 to JJ for work in this new School, as well as £5 to JJ for work in the History department.

As prospective input to the discussions on the supplementary grant, which was a spin-off from the Treaty negotiations, the Junior Fellows produced a report, from a drafting committee consisting of Canning, Luce and JJ. This was set up on a motion of JJ, seconded by Alton, at the meeting on Nov 27 1921, and reported on Dec 5, the report being adopted by the Junior Fellows, but apparently the Board had already on Dec 3 done the carve-up, so this work was in vain. This series of three Junior Fellows meetings in November and December were in fact all one meeting with adjournments. They covered a series of issues, including the problem of how to simplify the electoral procedure of Junior Fellows to the Board, and the role of Fellows in Honours teaching. These do not seem to have reached the Board. On can sense frustration(6) among the reformers.

In 1926 JJ got permission from the Board, slightly grudgingly, to take up a Rockefeller Fellowship, which brought him to France to study the price-differential between the farm gate prices and prices paid by consumers for food. He had in mind the need to develop an efficient co-operative marketing system, and this was the theme of much of his extern work(7).

In the mid-20s there were again moves to set up a School of Commerce, and JJ by his outside work for the Government(8), and by research into retail pricing supported by the Rockefeller Foundation, felt that he deserved to be associated with this. Yet when the Board set up a School Committee in 1925, JJ was overlooked, in favour of Goligher, to whom he was still assistant lecturer in ancient history. He went on to publish his Rockefeller work in the SSISI in 1927. Nor did his Groundwork in Economics, a popularising book based on his 1920s Barrington Lectures, apparently count for anything.

Towards the end of the decade, in 1928, JJ was elected to represent the Junior Fellows on the Lectures Committee. I have not discovered what this implied, but I suspect it was a relatively routine process to do with scheduling and locations.

Then in 1929 the Board set up requirements for recruiting a Fellow in Economics, and arranged to do it by examination, imposing a strong theoretical bias. Extern examiners were selected, including initially Pigou, a world-figure in the domain, who however declined to act, being rightly suspicious of this obsolete procedure. The attempt to recruit for the Chair via a 'Fellowship by examination' procedure then, rightly, sank without trace, but this episode introduced a delay in the emergence of a significant School of Commerce.

In the 1930s JJ became more involved in the College, eventually standing for the Senate and getting elected in 1938, but his relationship with the College authorities during the decade was under increasing tension. In 1932 they got around to setting up a School of Commerce, with JJ, Duncan and Constantia Maxwell lecturing, but as yet no Chair.

In 1934 the Commerce School Committee was extended to include outside experience, in the form of Dublin businessman JCM Eason, with whom JJ was actively involved via the SSISI. This I suspect represented JJ exerting his influence in making the School real-world oriented. It cut no ice with the Board however, because when he applied for a grant towards the publication of his critical 'Nemesis of Economic Nationalism', they cut back on his request, and imposed conditions. From correspondence which is on record in his papers, it is evident that to obtain even this, he had the threaten the Board with an appeal to the Visitors(9). He had aspired to publish his book with the weight of professorial status behind it; the Chair however went to Duncan.

During this time JJ had been farming near Drogheda; his ongoing economic laboratory was to run a 30-acre farm (the then norm), employing a man, and to keep the books. His insight into the economics of Irish agriculture gained by this means was unrivalled; he was recognised as a pioneering one-man Agricultural Institute by the professionals who followed in the 1950s and 60s (Dr Tom Walsh the Director of the Agricultural Institute showed his appreciation by coming to his funeral in 1972).

De Valera however had initiated the 'economic war', to the extent that some of the Irish people benefited from 'free beef' for a time, due to the collapse of the market. JJ's agricultural experiment was hit by this; he managed however to do a deal with the Board, based on actuarial calculations, to get an advance on his salary as Senior Fellow, to which he would be entitled from the time when two of his Board predecessors died off. There was a cryptic reference to this in the Board minutes, and I have a copy of the detailed letter which he submitted to the Bursar. He managed at the same time to link it with a criticism of the gerontocratic principle on which the College was run, and the iniquity of the promotional blocks put in the way of mid-career people.

As we have seen, Duncan got the Chair of Economics, and McDowell in his history assessed JJ as having fallen between the two stools of classics and economics, seeing his juniors get chairs before him, attributing JJ's incursion into farming to this cause. This is quite wrong; his incursion into farming was targeted at understanding real-world applied economics, and pre-dated his failure to get the Economics chair by the best part of a decade. In the end a Chair in Applied Economics ('for present holder only') was created for him in 1939.

In 1937 and 1938 JJ took part in a series of Junior Fellows meetings which put on record a demand for a broadening of the basis for election of Provost; these later formed part of the basis for the McConnell Reforms of the 1950s. There was also at this time a hint of an abandonment of the seniority practice for co-opting Fellows to Senior status on the Board, and I suspect that this may have been encouraged by JJ's continuing 'enfant terrible' status, writing boat-rocking books and so on.

The 1940s began with JJ in the lead of the Junior Fellows, supportive of the democratic reform issues which came to fruition with the McConnell 'palace revolution' in the 1950s, but increasingly taking a back seat, as his accession to Board membership loomed on the horizon, finally taking place at the end of 1943 with the death of Matty Fry.

In the late 40s JJ's influence indicated the effect of 'new blood' in the gerontocracy; the first moves to develop a link with the Government took place, and money became available as a result of lobbying de Valera. The link with Magee was defended, despite obstructive moves by the Stormont Government. The School of Agriculture was strengthened, and staff was recruited in support of Statistics. There was a positive response to the national 150-year commemoration of 1798, and a proposal to form an Orange Lodge was rejected(10).

The Student Representative Council was strengthened by adopting a democratic constitution, which the Board accepted (the present writer RJ, then a student, had a hand in pushing this from below). There was continuing support for the all-Ireland Irish Students Association (in contrast to the grudging attitude of the NUI), and support for an all-Ireland Universities Council. Attempts by the British Colonial Office to gain access for recruitment were rebuffed.

During this, for JJ, 'golden decade' the basis was laid for what perhaps can be assessed as an important turning-point in his academic career: the Berkeley Bicentenary celebration, which was planned for 1953, and in which JJ gave a seminal paper on Berkeley as economist(11). Despite this, and his role of an advance guard of the 50s 'new wave' democratic reform movement, the next decade was to be one of increasing frustration, as the wave, in effect, broke over him, leaving him marginalised, though, as we shall see, he still had a positive role to play in the School of Agriculture, and in the episode of the Kells Ingram Farm.

The 1950s began with the Board responding to pressure from the Junior Fellows and taking further the negotiations with the de Valera Government. There were indications of Marshall Plan money becoming available for investment into agricultural research, and JJ had a hand in the early manoeuvrings of TCD to be in the running for a slice of the action.

This process however was interrupted by the deaths successively of Sir Robert Tate, being replaced by Parke, and then on February 19 1952 of Provost Alton, which opened up the battle for succession. This was won by AJ McConnell, from Ballymena, the Professor of Applied Maths, who was known personally to de Valera. The 'reform party' was now firmly in the lead, and proceeded to ensure that all the influential posts went to Junior Fellows and recent Board recruits, with the 'old guard' being sidelined, a source of experience perhaps to be called upon from time to time, but no longer calling the shots(12). .

In this context JJ got to be the keeper of the Board's minutes, which are in his writing for most of the decade. He contributed to the defeat of a proposal to force retirement on the old-timers, but a vote to abolish the fine for non-attendance slipped through, and this had the effect of slowly eroding the influence of the gerontocracy over the following years.

He attempted to get his lecture load reduced from 6 to 4, but was unsuccessful. He had earlier recruited Brian Inglis as a part-time assistant, to lecture in Economic Organisation. The Board now ruled that this had to come out of his salary. This rebuff was the trigger for JJ to pull out of Dublin and again take up part-time farming, this time in Laois, near Stradbally(13).

In June 1953 JJ again was passed over in the allocation of the key posts; he and Luce responded by writing a memorandum to the effect that it was bad policy to exclude the old-timers from posts of influence, as this would encumber the Professors with administrative tasks and prevent them from getting on with their professing, keeping their departments in the forefront of research etc. This memo was rejected, with Luce and JJ being consigned again to the fringe.

In June 1954 however JJ got to be Senior Proctor, a post carrying responsibility for validating degrees awarded. From here on the Board minutes refer to acceptance of the 'Proctor's Lists' on certain occasions; JJ felt the need to minute his own role. He continued to play a role in the ongoing negotiations involving TCD, UCD and the NUI and the Government in the setting up of the Agricultural Institute. These were protracted, extending over the best part of the decade, and are worthy of in-depth analysis, as a window into the slow learning process of the State about the role of scientific research, and into the negative effects of the 'intellectual Partition of Dublin' which mirrored the political Partition of the nation into rival hegemonistic-minded Protestant and Catholic components.

On November 2 1955 the College issued a press statement reminding the public of their role in agricultural education since 1906. In 1956 they decided to take steps to set up an enhanced School of Agriculture in association with the projected Agricultural Institute; they had also been strengthening their links with the Veterinary College, and JJ was on the School Committee. Then on March 14 1956 it was proposed to develop a School of Agriculture in association with the projected Agricultural Institute, and a printed memorandum was projected. The memo was critical of the Government proposals, which were described as vague. If the entity were to be centralised, TCD wanted unrestricted access. If decentralised, TCD wanted full faculty status. The memo suggested four university-based faculties, each tackling different research problems.

TCD was making a bid for soil science, with emphasis on upland soils. A location for a farm in south Co Dublin was sought, with access to upland. The farm was to be run on commercial lines. The other locations were to be related to UCD, UCC and UCG. The memo was presented to the Minister at the end of May by the Provost and Registrar.

In 1957 they decided to invest in Townley Hall, a Meath manor-house type farm of 300 acres, and develop this as the practical component of the School of Agriculture. This issue was contentious, and the Board divided, the names being registered.

The Provost, Parke, Gwynn, Luce, Stanford, Wormell, Mitchell, Chubb and JJ were for; against were Thrift, Godfrey, Fearon, Duncan, Poole and Torrens. There is digging to be done if we are to understand the political rationale for this division. Both old-timers and 'new wave' are on each side. Opposition seemed to come from the science and medical faculties. Duncan, who held the Chair of Economics, was also opposed.

But Provost McConnell and Registrar Mitchell were supportive, and JJ for a time got to ride with 'new wave' college politics, until later when the project went sour under the stress of what perhaps can be identified as Government centralist institutional politics.

(I can perhaps put forward as a working hypothesis that those against the Farm represented the old Protestant defeated-ascendancy view (keep your heads down, don't rock the boat, accept Catholic nationalist hegemony, and hope to survive unnoticed in the undergrowth) while those for the Farm represented a positive assertion of Protestant participation in mainstream national development. The Provost, Gwynn, Stanford, Mitchell and my father were certainly all of the latter view.)

The TCD Agriculture School had earlier depended on students doing their practical work at the Albert College in Glasnevin, which has been set up by Plunkett under the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction. This was given to UCD in 1924, without consultation with TCD. A negotiated arrangement existed with UCD for continued access to the Albert College, set up under Coffey's Presidency. Townley Hall would give them an independent negotiating position in the context of the emerging Agricultural Institute structure.

The farm was to be called the Kells Ingram Farm, and this, in the context of the battle with UCD for slices of the Agricultural Institute cake, was a political act. Ingram was the author of the ballad 'Who Fears to Speak of Ninety Eight'. The naming of the farm was a bid to get the College accepted by Government as part of the national mainstream, and an act of defiance in the face of UCD's efforts to marginalise TCD, under the leadership of Tierney.

We had here a 300 acre unit, with timber, crops, livestock and a walled garden, an integrated traditional manor farm unit, supporting over 10 families and generating substantially more added value than 10 30 acre units would produce, if the farm were to be divided, according to the political objectives of Fianna Fail(14).

When the Annual Offices came around on June 19 1957 JJ managed, with the momentum of the Kells Ingram Farm victory, to get his way with regard to appointments. The Provost wanted Mitchell as Bursar and Chubb for Registrar, while JJ wanted these reversed; Mitchell had done a good job as Registrar along with JJ, representing the College with the Department of Agriculture, and JJ wanted continuity of experience with this role in the context of the Kells Ingram farm committee. JJ got his way. It was then agreed that Mitchell as Registrar should, as a routine role, represent the College in negotiations with external bodies.

The Farm remained contentious; in 1959 there was a bid to get rid of it, originating from Duncan and Fearon, but this was defeated, and the farm got access to more capital, and a direct link with the Finance Committee. This was stimulus to JJ to take a look at College investment policy, which he compared unfavourably with that of the Church of Ireland Representative Body.

The Farm, and its possible role in the still nascent Agricultural Institute remained high on the agenda of the academic leadership: Mitchell and Pakenham-Walsh were sent to attend a conference of Schools of Agriculture in Paris on July 27-31, under the OEEC (Organisation of European Economic Co-operation), the 'Marshall Plan' body which was funding the Irish investment in the Agricultural Institute.

On May 6 1959 the Board approved the initiation of an Honours course in Agriculture. On October 1, in JJ's absence, there was set up a School Committee for Agriculture and Forestry; Pakenham-Walsh became Registrar and the committee included McHugh the Manager, the Bursar, JJ, Mitchell and LG Carr-Lett. Much of the work within the TCD School of Agriculture was actually done in UCD under an old arrangement going back to Coffey's time; I interpret this as evidence of an attempt on the TCD side to further develop inter-university co-operation, in the context of the opportunity presented by the OEEC funding, despite Tierney's ongoing hostility, as documented by Donal McCartney in his 'UCD a National Idea'.

During this time my father remained active in defence of the TCD role in agriculture, insofar as he could, from his distant base in Bayly Farm near Nenagh. He was absent, during 1960, on February 10, 17 and 24. On the latter date the Board agreed to drop the Arts requirements for the School of Agriculture; this meant dropping the French and German options. JJ had I suspect had these requirements originally put in, on foot of his earlier experience of trying to get the Irish agricultural community to look to the Continent rather than to Britain for external experience.

On March 16 they decided to conclude an agreement with the new Agricultural Institute for setting up an Applied Genetics Unit. Then on April 20 they employed a Research Assistant, Saeve Coffey, and the following week they agreed to give Mitchell residential status there, while he remained Chairman of the Farm Committee. On May 11 it was agreed that George Dawson in Genetics should undertake work for the Agricultural Institute, and on June 1 they decided to expand the Veterinary College building into the College Botanical Gardens.

The TCD Board was still clearly aspiring to have an ongoing role for the College in both agricultural and veterinary science. Dawson's Genetics Unit was set up on June 29 at the farm, the agreement with the Agricultural Institute having been made successfully. By November however it became apparent that they needed to spend money on the farm again; they agreed to seek tenders for alterations.

On November 9, JJ being present, 5 students were excluded from the School of Agriculture, suggesting that the system was under some strain. JJ got to represent the College at the National Horticultural Research Conference to be held in Dublin in December. He was however absent on Saturday November 19, when the question of evidence for the Higher Education Commission is discussed.

To conclude the decade: one gets the impression that JJ's pet projects, the Kells Ingram Farm, and the Honours School of Agriculture, were under some strain, and he himself was losing interest, turning to the completion of his Berkeley book.

The 1960s decade(15) began however on an up-beat note, with JJ actively involved with the Kells Ingram Farm project, though living remotely, and with academic load decreasing.

The Farm and Agriculture School situation however soon began to decline; there were structural problems with Townley Hall, involving dry rot, which soaked up significant resources. Demand for the Honours course in Agriculture declined; for a while there was a one-year certificate course, validated by the Farm Committee (the College itself wanted nothing to do with it). For a while they tried to develop Townley Hall as a conference centre, and occasional conferences were held there, for the Student Christian Movement and for the Fabian Society. JJ continued to take an interest; a lecturer in Farm Management was recruited.

A radioactive source was obtained and some work on plant genetics was done by Dawson and team, with a grant from the Agricultural Institute, which by now had become established as a centralist State research agency. By 1963 however it was clear that a strategy was emerging whereby Agriculture would go to UCD and TCD would get the Veterinary College. Despite this, the TCD Agriculture School, in a rearguard action, developed a course in agricultural microbiology, and they made an attempt to boost student numbers by recruiting from abroad.

Towards the end of 1963 the farm got a grant from Gouldings, which enabled it continue for a while longer, though the emphasis in the coursework is increasingly in the direction of management, under Pakenham-Walsh; in 1964 the latter moved back to College to take over the Business Studies School, and it was agreed not to accept any more Honours agriculture students.

Thus it had become increasingly clear that the farm and the school of agriculture were being run down, and the College was counting on its Veterinary interest as its main link with the Agricultural Institute. JJ was again being marginalised, and his vision of a managed synergistic multi-enterprise large-scale farm as the model generator of rural wealth and employment was being eroded. Realising that he had lost the battle he turned increasingly to his last project, which was to pull together all is work on Berkeley into a publishable book.

Towards the end of 1966 JJ witnessed the ending of the Kells Ingram Farm episode. The Annual Report came on October 10; they decided to defer discussion until they saw the accounts on November 2. Then on November 9 they decided to sell the farm, subject to College agriculture policy and public policy; in other words they left the door open for a while to see if some deal could finally be done with the Government and the Agricultural Institute.

On April 26 1967, with JJ present, the Board welcomed the Government's statement that there was to be one Dublin University with constituent Colleges. The focus shifted to the 'merger debate', which became intense, and this kept JJ's interest in Board meetings alive. The sale of the farm involved the need to consult with Mitchell, the Dept of Agriculture, the Veterinary College, the Agricultural Institute and the users of the radioactive source. Mitchell did not object to the sale of the farm, but in view of the merger politics the decision needed to be deferred (May 22). They experienced difficulty however in meeting with UCD. The Board was addressed by the Minister on June 7. The details of this proposal, in which lurked the proverbial devil, are outlined in Donal McCartney's 'UCD a National Idea' (G&M 1999) p314ff.

By the end of the year the issue was moribund, but it had prompted many people to look at how closer relations could be developed, and contacts opened up, which continued. It encouraged TCD to think that even it they sold the farm, they could still have a role in agriculture.

The 'merger' debate rumbled on for some time; there was a meeting on September 25 1968 at which the recommendations of the Merger Committee were discussed; JJ is on record as having attended. He was present again on April 23 1970; Watts and Dawson were also there; proposal were discussed arising from a meeting of TCD and UCD representatives.

JJ also attended on July 24 1970; there was no item I could see which might have been of special interest to him; perhaps he just looked in at random. Spearman was there. He had, after all, not formally retired, being of pre-1920 vintage. I may yet get some input from people who encountered him on these occasions, and pick up what angle he had on the merger, if any.

On previous form I conjecture that he would have held out for the interests of Magee College and of the Northern students. JJ is on record as having attended again on January 27 1971; the topic discussed was 'the future University of Dublin'; the merger debate was still smouldering. Watts and Winder were there. In 1972 he did not attend any meetings; he is recorded as absent up to February 23, when he vanished off the record; the Board accepted his wish to retire at a pension of £3207, with the status of Fellow Emeritus. The Senior Fellows met and co-opted TW Moody in his place.

The last act in the drama was played on May 3 1972 when it appeared in the Academic Council minutes that favourable reports from 2 external examiners on his Berkeley book enabled them to recommend that he be awarded the degree of D Litt. He received this at the June commencements, on the same occasion as when the composer Shostakovitch was awarded an honorary degree. I had to help him up the steps in the examination-hall to receive it. He died a few weeks later.

RJ and the TCD-Industry Interface

When I left Aer Lingus at the end of 1970, I picked up some techno-economic consultancy, so I went to Professor FG Foster in TCD, and suggested I combine these with MSc project work, in a new programme he was developing, for an MSc in Operations Research and Statistics. I retained responsibility for delivery of a result to the client to a schedule, while the students did some of the work, with me filling in if there were delivery problems. Academically I had the status of a sort of extern supervisor. This was eventually regularised by my being given the status of 'Research Associate' in the Statistics Department. There must have been a Board decision about this.

The projects involved team work, with a statistical data-gathering aspect, and then the building of a decision model, which used the statistics as part of its inputs, the rest of the inputs being conjectured values for parameters which enabled various scenarios to be explored, in a sort of 'what if' exercise. This type of procedure was becoming feasible for 'domain experts' using user-friendly high-level computer languages, typically Fortran. I found myself in with the extern examiner and the Prof carrying out the examination procedure.

The flexibility of TCD procedures are to be commended for making this possible, and I am indebted to Gordon Foster for knowing how to exploit them. The result was a programme based on good real-world problem-solving projects; these are described elsewhere, in the techno-economic stream(16).

While this was going on, the Industrial Liaison Office was initiated, and Justin Wallace was recruited, servicing the needs, as then perceived, for a while, without much success, so that he resigned, and the post was in danger of lapsing. I got wind of this, and put them the proposal that I would do it, part time, combining it with my own consultancy, and the arrangement with Foster.

In this context the opportunity arose to get seed-funding from the Industrial Development Authority for a proactive university-industry interface, supplying a specialist problem-solving service using project officers without academic priorities, working on the fringes of selected strong academic research groups, whose research results looked like they had good applications potential. This was set up, as an inter-departmental structure, the 'Applied-Research Consultancy Group', with the present writer as its manager.

The interest of the IDA was aroused thanks to an honorary degree being awarded to a leading Bell Labs researcher, an ex-colleague of Prof Vincent McBrierty in the physics department, who had worked in Bell Labs on nuclear magnetic resonance. There was a dinner, with IDA people present, and ideas were exchanged. At that time recognition of world-class research going on in Ireland by the IDA was non-existent; the civil service 'cult of the foreign expert' ruled supreme. This episode was perhaps among the beginnings of the process which in the 1990s led finally to some degree of State recognition of the utility of the Irish scientific research community.

Applied-research units were set up in association with the physics, electronic engineering, botany and genetics departments. Gerry Wardell worked on various advanced instrumentation concepts (eg measurement of uniformity of dispersion of filler in a non-homogeneous solid), some of which arose from McBrierty's work. Tony Moore pioneered some microelectronic applications, for example intelligent control of night storage heater charge, with Arthur Dexter. Daphne Levinge did environmental impact work, and Joan Ryan supplied a computer-based herd milk-yield analysis, at the individual cow level, for use in breeding, a spin-off from the genetic research of Padraig Cunningham.

The IDA funding enabled us to recruit good people from the existing postgraduate stock. For example, Daphne had done her PhD on the problem of re-vegetating mine tips. The group initially prospered; we doubled our revenue in three successive years, and covered our overheads(17). In the fourth year however we ran into a barrier; we went to the IDA for expansion funding, on the basis of our positive track-record, to invest in dedicated equipment (basically a PDP11 mini-computer) which would have enabled us to bid for some UN contract work, related to keeping track of genetic diversity in the world food crops. Our IDA proposal was blocked by a civil service ruling, that the IDA was not supposed to be funding academic institutions. As a consequence we ran into cash flow problems, and the TCD Board got worried. In the end we were stood down, but lessons were learned: the way to go for bringing research results to the market turned out to be the spin-off company. Mike Peirce's computer-aided manufacturing group, which had been associated with the ARC group, spun off and became Mentec ltd, one of the 'celtic tiger' success stories.

The ARC Group records have been archived, and no doubt when the TCD records are available, historians of the 'science in society' and 'socio-technical' and 'techno-economic' processes in Ireland will perhaps find some footnotes from this experience. My contract came to an end in 1984 and I went back to the private sector.

Notes and References

2. I expand on this episode in the 1910s Plunkett hypertext module, over-viewed in Appendix 4, where it emerges that Traill played a very positive supportive role.

3. JJ's role as a militant Home Ruler in the largely unionist TCD environment would have given rise to tensions, and it is quite possible that the Board were glad to see him disappear on his Albert Kahn world tour, hoping that it would settle him. I treat this in Appendix 10 which overviews the political thread of the hypertext; the book is accessible from the 1910s political module.

4. JJ subsequently, in a Seanad speech, acknowledged the influence of Mahaffey in persuading him to apply for the Albert Kahn Fellowship, as a means of extending his potential utility to the college; this theme is treated in Appendix 3.

5. He subsequently wrote up the experience in an article in the February 1921 issue of Better Business (vol 6 no 2) on The Trinity Co-op: Past present and Future. This was the quarterly journal of the Co-operative Reference Library, Plunkett House. There was a forward by AE; it is available in full in the hypertext.

6. There is much detail about the politics of TCD and its relationship to the British and Free State Governments given in the 1920s TCD module in the hypertext, some of which affects JJ directly, and all of which is relevant background.

7. JJ's extern work was concentrated on the Barrington Trust lecturing as over-viewed in Appendix 7, and from 1924 on the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society as over-viewed in Appendix 6.

8. JJ's work for the Government included the Boundary Commission, the Agriculture Commission of 1923-24 and the Prices Commission of 1926; the detail of this is accessible via the Seanad and Public Services thread of the hypertext, as over-viewed in Appendix 8. He had by his prior work in 1917-20 established his credentials with the Free State; this can be followed via Appendix 10 which overviews the political thread.

9. I go into this in more detail in the 1930s TCD module of the hypertext. For insight into Duncan, see his Irish Times obituary, published on January 28, 2006; he died at the age of 103.

10. These and other related issues are treated in the 1940s TCD hypertext module.

11. This seminal paper on Berkeley as economist is accessed primarily from the 1950s academic module of the hypertext, as over-viewed in Appendix 1.

12. The details of the McConnell succession, the Kells Ingram Farm and related matters are treated in the 1950s TCD module in the hypertext.

13. This gave rise to some pilot experience later recounted in the SSISI proceedings, in an economic symposium in 1959, dedicated to the Whitaker plan. JJ demonstrated the viability of combining market gardening with a few cows, provided organised access to a market existed. The College kitchen took his produce.

14. JJ had made this argument repeatedly in lectures and papers, typically in the SSISI where he had published The Capitalisation of Irish Agriculture (JSSISI xvi, 44, 1941-2), and elsewhere, over the years from the 20s.

15. The record of JJ's final decade or so, from 1961 up to 1972 when he died, is in the 1960s TCD hypertext module.

16. See the 1970s techno-economic module, also Operations Research in Ireland ed Julian Mac Airt (Mercier Press, Cork, 1988).

17. For some examples of the output of the ARC Group see the 1970s techno-economic and the 1970s socio-technical modules of the hypertext.

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Copyright Dr Roy Johnston 2002