IIEA Talks

Václav Bartuška is Ambassador-at-Large for Energy Security at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Czechia. Policies to enhance energy security formed an important component of the Czech Presidency of the European Union which concluded at the end of 2022. Ambassador Bartuška has also served as a plenipotentiary of the Czech Government for the expansion of Temelin Nuclear Power Plant. He teaches security studies and modern history at New York University as well as a course on energy diplomacy at the College of Europe. During the 1989 Revolution, Ambassador Bartuška was a student leader and was subsequently elected by the Czech Parliament to the Commission investigating the secret police, where he played a role in disbanding it. This event has been organised in conjunction with the Embassy of the Czech Republic in Ireland.

Whistleblowing is a relatively new concept, with the term only being popularised in the 1970s. Until recently, protection for whistleblowers remained fragmented, precarious, and unequal across countries and economic sectors. In 2016, the French Parliament first defined a whistleblower in legislation. Later, in 2019, the Whistleblower Protection Directive was passed by the EU Institutions and has been largely hailed as a global standard setter in this field. In her address to the IIEA, Maureen Kearney discusses her experiences as a whistleblower, the current state of whistleblower protection in France and the EU, the role of trade unions in whistleblowing procedures, and areas where whistleblower protection can be improved. About the Speaker: A native of Castlebar, Maureen Kearney moved to Paris in the mid-1980s to work as a teacher in the nuclear industry for a subsidiary of what would later become Areva. She joined the trade union, Confédération française démocratique du travail (CFDT), in the 1990s after seeing her students threatened with redundancy and progressively became a leading trade union activist within the company. In 2004, she was unanimously elected General Secretary of the Areva European Works Council by trade unionists across 14 countries. In 2012, she gained notoriety for blowing the whistle on Areva's planned technology transfers to China. Her experiences as a whistleblower were subsequently documented in a book and film, both called La Syndicaliste (released in English as The Sitting Duck), released in 2019 and 2023, respectively.

In this podcast, Dr. Katrin Assenmacher discusses the rise of digital money and the potential introduction of a digital euro. She explores the need for a European payment solution and the implications of a central bank digital currency on monetary policy and financial stability. Dr. Assenmacher also highlights the potential advantages of a digital euro in payment services while addressing the challenges it presents.

According to Pinelopi Koujianou Goldberg, former Chief Economist of the World Bank Group, the recent retreat from globalisation has been triggered by a perception that increased competition from global trade is not fair and leads to increased inequality within countries. Is this phenomenon a small hiccup in the overall wave of globalisation, or are we at the beginning of a new era of deglobalisation? In her address to the IIEA, Professor Goldberg argues that the answer depends on the policy choices we make, and in her latest book, The Unequal Effects of Globalization, she calls for exploring alternative policy approaches including place-based policies, while sustaining international cooperation. About the Speaker: Pinelopi (Penny) Koujianou Goldberg is the Elihu Professor of Economics and an Affiliate of the Economic Growth Center at Yale University. From November 2018 to March 2020, she was the Chief Economist of the World Bank Group. Professor Goldberg was President of the Econometric Society in 2021 and has previously served as Vice-President of the American Economic Association. From 2011 to 2017, she was Editor-in-Chief of the American Economic Review. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, recipient of Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and Sloan Research Fellowships, and recipient of the Bodossaki Prize in Social Sciences.

In his address to the IIEA, Professor Gearty reflects upon the divergence between British law and EU law in the aftermath of Brexit, particularly in the field of human rights, and what this may mean (if anything) for Ireland as one of the few remaining common law jurisdictions in the European Union and the Council of Europe. Professor Gearty also reflects on Britain’s future relationship with, and membership of, the Council of Europe and in particular, the UK’s continued participation in the European Convention on Human Rights, and the European Court of Human Rights that oversees that Convention. Professor Gearty also offers his perspective on the future of the UK Human Rights Act. About the Speaker: Conor Gearty is Professor of Human Rights Law at LSE and also a barrister at Matrix Chambers. He published On Fantasy Island. Britain, Europe and Human Rights in 2016.His next book, Homeland Insecurity. The Rise and Rise of Global Anti-terrorism Law will be published by Polity in Spring 2024. Professor Gearty is Vice-President for Social Sciences at the British Academy and a Member of the Royal Irish Academy. He is an Honorary King’s Counsel and Bencher of Middle Temple (London) and the King’s Inn (Dublin).

General Birame Diop is the Military Advisor to the Department of Peace Operations at the United Nations. General Diop has over 30 years of military experience, previously serving as Chief of the Defence Staff of the Senegalese Armed Forces. He has also served as National Security Advisor to the President of Senegal and Air Force Chief of Staff. He has also served as Deputy and Chief Air operations with United Nations Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUC) from 2002 to 2003. General Diop is a graduate of the Royal Air Academy in Morocco, of the Air University in the United States of America, and from the French War College.

On the back of the publication of the 2023 African Economic Outlook report by the African Development Bank (AfDB) in May 2023, Professor Kevin Chika Urama, Vice President and Chief Economist of the African Development Bank, and Mette Knudsen, the Executive Director who represents Ireland’s constituency on the Board of the African Development Bank, are doing a tour of several of the AfDB’s donor countries – including Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. During their stop in Ireland, the IIEA hosted Prof Urama for a keynote address where he discusses the recently published 2023 African Economic Outlook, the work of the AfDB, and the wider economic challenges and opportunities facing Africa. Additionally, Ms Knudsen provides opening remarks at the event and an interactive Q&A session follows the keynote address where both distinguished guests share their unique insights. About the Speaker: Kevin Chika Urama is currently the Chief Economist and Vice-President for Economic Governance & Knowledge Management at the African Development Bank Group (AfDB). Prof Urama is an elected Fellow of the African Academy of Sciences (AAS); a Distinguished Professor of the University of Nigeria; an Extra-Ordinary Professor in the School of Public Leadership, Stellenbosch University, South Africa; an Adjunct Professor at the Sir Walter Murdoch School of Public Policy and International Affairs, Western Australia; and a Member of the Global Council on the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for the term 2021-2023. Prior to joining the AfDB, Kevin Urama was the inaugural Managing Director of the Quantum Global Research Lab, Switzerland; Executive Director of the African Technology Policy Studies Network (ATPS); and Senior Research Fellow at the Macaulay Land Use Research Institute, Scotland. Kevin holds an MPhil and a PhD in Land Economy from the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom. Mette Knudsen is currently Executive Director in the Board of the African Development Bank in Abidjan, representing Denmark, Finland, India, Ireland, Norway, and Sweden. She has previously served as the Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary General for Political Affairs (DSRSG/P) in UNAMA, the UN mission in Afghanistan from 2021 to 2022. Before that she was Denmark’s Ambassador to Afghanistan from 2020 to 2021 and was Denmark’s Ambassador to Kenya, Somalia, Eritrea, and the Seychelles 2015-2020. Earlier in her career she has served as Danish Ambassador to Greece and Cyprus (2012-2015), Ethiopia, the African Union, and ECOWAS (2004-2007). She has been head of the Africa Department in the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs (2007-2012) and has also had postings in Zambia (2002-2004) and Tanzania (1995-1998).

Sinn Féin is the most popular political party in Ireland and Northern Ireland. The local government elections in Northern Ireland in May 2023 cemented Sinn Féin’s status as the largest party north of the border, while polling indicates that Mary Lou McDonald could lead the party into government in the Republic at the next General Election. Questions therefore arise as to what a Sinn Féin government would mean for Ireland’s role in the European Union, Irish unity, and military neutrality, amongst other issues. In her keynote address to the IIEA, award-winning journalist Aoife Moore discusses her new book, The Long Game: Inside Sinn Féin, including what can be expected from Sinn Féin as a party of government and how a Sinn Féin-led Northern Ireland Executive may impact post-Brexit politics. In the 25th anniversary year of the Good Friday Agreement, Ms Moore also discusses the state of play in Northern Irish politics.  About the Speaker:  Aoife Moore is an award-winning journalist and the author of The Long Game: Inside Sinn Féin. She is a former political correspondent for the Sunday Times and the Irish Examiner and spent two years working as a journalist for Press Association. In 2020, she broke the “Golfgate” story on the Oireachtas Golf Society scandal along with her colleague Paul Hosford, for which they were jointly awarded Journalist of the Year at the 2021 Newsbrands Irish Journalism Awards. A Derry native, Ms Moore has written and commented extensively on Northern Ireland, Irish and Northern Irish politics, the legacy of the Troubles, and the Good Friday Agreement, as well as the unique challenges faced by women in Irish journalism and more widely in Irish society.

The global security environment is in a state of flux. Not only is Europe contending with the kinetic threat posed by Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, but emerging threats – including climate change, AI, cyber, quantum computing, food and water shortages, and advanced robotics – are increasingly becoming threat multipliers. In this context, strategic foresight has become an important capability for governments and government institutions to enable informed and better decision-making. This panel discussion, which is jointly hosted by the IIEA and Deloitte, aims to provoke an open discussion about the present and future threat environments and to reflect on how organisations can best develop and utilise strategic foresight capabilities to navigate a changing, contested, and challenging security context. About the Speakers: Dr Raluca Csernatoni is a Fellow at Carnegie Europe where she specialises in European security and defence, as well as emerging disruptive technologies. Csernatoni is currently a guest professor on European security and counterterrorism at the Brussels School of Governance and its Centre for Security, Diplomacy and Strategy, at Vrije Universiteit Brussels in Brussels, Belgium; Dr Florian Klein founded and leads the Centre for the Long View (CLV) network, which is Deloitte’s global centre of excellence for scenario planning and AI-enabled sensing. Florian has authored several books on mega trends and on designing strategic decision systems; Dr Eamonn Noonan of the EPRS Policy Foresight Unit has been involved in the inter-institutional ESPAS network (European Strategy and Policy Analysis System) since 2015. He recently returned from an EU Fellowship at St. Antony’s College Oxford. As an Irish diplomat, he had postings to Luxemburg and Norway. He has studied in Florence, Mainz and Cork.

In this address to the IIEA, Simon Coveney TD, Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment delivers a keynote address discussing the recently published White Paper on Enterprise 2022-2030 and its implications for SMEs and multinationals based in Ireland. Following this, the event features a panel discussion during which Martina Fitzgerald, CEO of Scale Ireland, and Dr Frances Ruane, Chair of the National Competitiveness and Productivity Council, who respond to the Minister's presentation and share their perspectives on the White Paper. The event will be chaired by Dan O’Brien, IIEA Chief Economist. About the Speakers: Simon Coveney TD is the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, appointed in December 2022. He is also the Deputy Leader of Fine Gael. He has served as Minister for Foreign Affairs from 2017 to 2022 and Minister for Defence from 2020 to 2022. Between November 2017 and June 2020, he also held the office of Tánaiste. He has previously served as Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government from 2016 to 2017, Minister for Defence from 2014 to 2016, and Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine from 2011 to 2016. Martina Fitzgerald is CEO of Scale Ireland, the independent not-for-profit organisation representing Irish tech start-up and scaling companies. There are currently more than 2,200 tech start-up companies in Ireland, employing more than 50,000 people around the country. Martina is also actively involved in the global and European networks of start-up organisations and has contributed to many of the pan-European initiatives. Martina is also a board member of Dóchas, the Irish association of international development and humanitarian organisations. Prior to 2019, Martina was a leading national journalist, including as Political Correspondent with Ireland’s national broadcaster, RTÉ, and the author of a critically acclaimed best-selling book, Madam Politician, on the subject of Irish female government ministers. Dan O'Brien is Chief Economist of the Institute of International and European Affairs. He is also Adjunct Senior Research Fellow at University College Dublin’s Geary Institute and a regular media commentator on economic and public policy issues. For three years, from mid-2010, Dan was economics editor of The Irish Times, analysing and commenting on a wide range of Irish, European and global issues. Prior to that, he spent a dozen years, based in London and Geneva, as senior economist and editor at the Economist Intelligence Unit, an arm of The Economist Newspaper Group. Dan has also worked for the European Commission and as a consultant for the United Nations and Forfás, an Irish government in-house think tank. Frances Ruane is an Honorary Fellow at Trinity College Dublin (TCD) and a Research Affiliate at the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI). She is Chair of the National Competitiveness Council and represents Ireland on the European Productivity Network. An economist, she held academic and senior administrative positions at TCD between 1977 and 2006, and was Director of the ESRI from 2006 to 2015. Her research interests are in economic development, international economics and public policy, and she has published widely in these areas. Frances was elected a member of the Royal Irish Academy in 2003 and served as President of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland from 2016-2019.