IIEA Talks

In this, the second of the IIEA’s mini-series of webinars on the subject of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), Chris Calabia, Head of CBDC Programs at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Digital Currency Initiative, shares recent research on the opportunities and challenges presented by the potential introduction of a CBDC like a ‘digital dollar’. Mr Calabia addresses practical and policy questions that this digital asset could raise for our economies and societies, including whether CBDCs could promote greater financial inclusion and how to safeguard privacy while mitigating other risks like fraud and money laundering. About the Speaker: F. Christopher Calabia, CAMS, is Head of Central Bank Digital Currency Programs at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Digital Currency Initiative, which he joined in October 2022. His 30-year career in central banking and regulation included senior leadership roles at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the Dubai Financial Services Authority; secondments to the Bank for International Settlements (Switzerland) and the International Monetary Fund; and a Senior Advisor role at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Financial Services for the Poor Initiative. Mr Calabia is a certified anti-money laundering specialist and graduated from the Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy (MALD) and the University of Virginia (BA).

'More war: explaining conflict proliferation' Barrie Robinson, former Irish diplomat, and Dr Domitilla Sagramoso, expert on Russian foreign and security policy, in conversation with Dan O’Brien, IIEA Chief Economist.

Launched in 2023, the IIEA Disability Policy Programme explores Ireland’s obligations, strengths, and shortcomings in the area of disability policy. The programme has been designed in consultation with leading experts in the field of disability policy in Ireland and seeks to explore and understand the lived experience of persons with disabilities in Ireland and across Europe including in relation to fundamental rights, political participation, education, employment, and more. The focus of this event is education, specifically persons with a disability right to education under UNCRPD Article 24, of which the EU is a party too. Speakers share their personal lived experience, insights, perspectives, and knowledge regarding the barriers to educational access and the pathways to education being created. Speakers also share their thoughts on what policymakers and the education system in Europe should do to support greater inclusivity for persons with disabilities within all parts of our education system. About the Speakers: Keynote Address: Sadbh Feehan is a graduate of the Trinity Centre for People with Intellectual Disabilities (TCPID) in the School of Education, Trinity College Dublin. Sadbh graduated from Trinity College Dublin with a Certificate in Arts, Science, and Inclusive Applied Practice in June 2020. She completed a graduate internship in A&L Goodbody where she worked until July 2022. Sadbh began working as a graduate intern in the TCPID in September 2022 and was offered a permanent contract there in June 2023. Sadbh is a constant advocate for people with disabilities and has presented at a number of high-profile conferences and events, including most recently at a conference in Salzburg, Austria. Panelists: Delia Ferri is a Professor of Law at Maynooth University (MU) School of Law and Criminology and Co-Director of the MU Assisting Living & Learning (ALL) Institute. Prof. Ferri is also affiliated researcher at the DIRPOLIS Institute of Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna (Italy) within the research cluster on disability, and a fellow at the Burton Blatt Institute of Syracuse University (USA). She is a senior member of the European Disability Expertise network funded by the European Commission, and, since June 2023, a member of the Scientific Committee of the EU Fundamental Rights Agency. Michael Shevlin is Professor in Inclusive Education and Director of the Trinity Centre for People with Intellectual Disabilities in Trinity College Dublin. His teaching and research have focused on facilitating the inclusion of children and young people with special educational needs within mainstream schools, promoting the voice of marginalised people within decision making processes that affect their lives, and addressing access issues for young people with disabilities within compulsory and higher education. As Director of the Trinity Centre for People with Intellectual Disabilities, he manages the delivery of an accredited education into employment transition programme for young people with intellectual disabilities. Michael Teutsch is Head of Unit, Schools and Multilingualism, in the European Commission’s Directorate General for Education, Youth, Sport and Culture (DG EAC). The unit is a policy and programme unit contributing to the building of a European Education Area. He joined the European Commission in 2001, where he worked on labour mobility issues in the Commission’s Directorate General for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion (DG EMPL). Before that, he worked in the German Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, and in research projects in Germany and Italy on the European structural funds, and on transport and environment policy.

The importance of space for the global communications, finance, technology and daily life continues to grow. In this context, commercial organisations are increasingly developing upon the new opportunities which commercial space flight now provides. This panel discusses how Ireland, with its advanced technology sector and capabilities, could be well-placed to develop its space industry and make the most of this emerging sector. About the Speakers: Neale Richmond TD is Minister of State at the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment with responsibility for Business, Employment and Retail, a position which he has held since January 2023. Prior to his role as Minister of State, he was elected as a TD for Dublin Rathdown in the 2020 General Election. In April 2016, he was elected to Seanad Eireann, on the Labour Panel, where he was the Fine Gael Spokesperson on European Affairs and Chair of the Seanad Special Select Committee on the withdrawal of the UK from the EU. Sinéad O’Sullivan leads strategy at Harvard Business School’s Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness with Prof. Michael Porter. Additionally, she is a Professor of Aerospace Engineering at Illinois Institute of Technology. Formerly a Research Fellow at MIT’s College of Computing and MIT Sloan as well as a Human Spaceflight mission designer for NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, her work focuses on the intersection of technology, innovation, geopolitics, and defense. She is on the Board of the European Space Policy Institute and has advised over $1 billion of space technology investment and M&A transactions. Rory Fitzpatrick is CEO of National Space Centre, a world-class carrier-grade commercial teleport and centre for space research and development. A 20-year veteran of the satellite communications industry, Rory is a strong proponent of Ireland’s enterprise culture and the ability of the Irish space sector to stimulate economic growth and lead development of space technologies with both space and terrestrial applications. Peter Smyth is Commercial Director at Tyndall, responsible for industry engagement strategy and operations, and based at the national institute's Dublin office. He is a Chief Executive of thirty years' experience in the business of technology, translating customer needs into commercial return. Before joining Tyndall, he was founder and CEO of a number of technology start-ups and was an executive of technology IP firm Ceva at the time of its IPO (NASDAQ:CEVA, previously Parthus). An Electronic Engineering graduate of Dublin City University, Peter has held senior sales and product management positions while living in Ireland, the UK, the US and Germany.

'Outlook for the Irish and Transatlantic economies' Conall Mac Coille, Chief Economist of Davy Stockbrokers and Chief Economist designate of Bank of Ireland, in conversation with Dan O'Brien, IIEA Chief Economist

In the past decade, the European Union has faced unprecedented challenges; the first withdrawal of a Member State from the Union, increased irregular migration flows, and international conflict on European soil. These events pose legal, as well as political, challenges which the legal services of the EU institutions must navigate. The Council Legal Service assists the European Council, the Council, and its preparatory bodies in ensuring the legality and the drafting quality of acts and contributes to identifying legally correct and politically acceptable solutions to the challenges faced by the EU. In her address to the IIEA, Emer Finnegan, Director General of the Council Legal Service, discusses how European law has been used to respond to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and how the Legal Service assists the institutions in responding to other major political challenges for the EU. About the Speaker: Emer Finnegan is the Director-General of the Council Legal Service and the Legal Counsel of the European Council. She is the first Irish national and the second woman to hold these posts. Ms Finnegan has worked in the Council Legal Service since 1999 and was made a Director in the Service in 2015. As a Director, she was responsible for legal issues in the Competitiveness, Environment, and Transport, Telecom, and Energy Councils, and for legal issues concerning Employment, Social Affairs, Education, Agriculture and Fisheries. Ms Finnegan was closely involved with the negotiations on the Withdrawal Agreement and the Trade and Cooperation Agreement with the UK, and she has extensive experience representing the Council before the Court of Justice of the European Union.

Colombia is in the midst of a change, the development of a new focus on life, human rights, dignity and peace. Its foreign policy reflects that. In his address to the IIEA, Vice-Minister Coy discusses the Colombian Government’s foreign policy approach and priorities, especially regarding shared experiences and lessons on Peace implementation between Colombia and Ireland. He also discusses the unique ethnic, territorial, and gender-based approach required to achieve Total Peace through international cooperation and dialogue.  Francisco Coy is the Vice Minister for Foreign Affairs of Colombia, a position he has held since 2022. Vice-Minister Coy joined the Colombian Foreign Service in 1988 and has previously served as Advisor to the Foreign Minister from 2020 to 2022. He has also served as Deputy Chief of Mission of Colombia to Belgium, Luxembourg and to the European Union and NATO from 2015 until 2020. He has also been a Professor of Colombian Foreign Policy, Comparative Foreign Policies, and Foreign Policy of the United States at the Javeriana University, Andes University, Rosario University, Externado University of Colombia, the Military University, and Jorge Tadeo Lozano University.

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.